Darren Stevens: Kent's T20 Blast veteran still hungry for more silverware at 45

Darren Stevens might be 45 - and he might just have won his first trophy with Kent in 14 years - but the veteran all-rounder insists he is still hungry for more silverware.

"I've got no interest in stopping," said Stevens after playing a key part in helping Kent beat Sussex, and then Somerset, to win the T20 Blast.

"As long as I can keep myself fit, look after my body and the eyes stay good, I'll be all right.

"I've definitely got the desire to play white-ball cricket and win trophies. In all forms of cricket we're lucky at Kent to have such a lot of depth.

"We have a strong squad for the next five or 10 years. The older I get the more I feel like I'm vying to get myself in the side, and to walk away with a trophy is unbelievable.

"I'm still playing the game because I want to win trophies and win games of cricket for Kent - and I have showed that I still have it in there."

Stevens' increasingly amazing exploits in red-ball cricket have been raising eyebrows for years now.

From being a batsman who bowled a bit in his early days, all his 31 five-wicket hauls in first-class cricket have come since his 35th birthday - as have 15 of his 37 centuries, including his career-best 237, as recently as 2019, at Headingley.

But, for four successive years, his County Championship form was not considered good enough to get him in Kent's T20 Blast team.

He even went out to Derbyshire on loan in 2019 to try and get a game - and, although limited to four starts, his magic rubbed off as it was the year they made it to Finals Day for the one and only time.

"I've been gutted over the last four years not getting a chance," he said. "But Kent have had a strong side.

"The way I have played in the Champo, where I've been aggressive, showed I still have the shots in me.

"And although I have always been pushing my case, this winter I really pushed hard."

This time he pushed hard enough at head coach Matt Walker's door, making him one of only 10 players still performing in short-form cricket this summer who also played in the very first Twenty20 in 2003.

Of those, three have already announced their impending retirement, 41-year-old Ryan ten Doeschate, 40-year-old Peter Trego, and ex-England all-rounder Rikki Clarke, who turns 40 next week.

Another, 36-year-old Liam Plunkett, is heading for Major League Cricket in the United States, leaving only five other survivors for 2022, 43-year-old Gareth Batty, Tim Murtagh (40), Tim Bresnan (37) and 36-year-old 'youngsters' Samit Patel and Ravi Bopara.

Stevens actually played in 11 of the group matches - only to then get left out of the quarter-final clash against the Birmingham Bears by Walker and captain Sam Billings, who chose Alex Blake instead.

Was he angry?

"If I didn't show that, then they would have been disappointed in me," he said. "It is the passion for the club and playing cricket. And I want to be at the forefront of any big match situation.

"I knew that if we got to Finals Day and the big game situations, I wanted a piece of it.

"Sam and Walks pulled me aside five minutes before the toss and said I was going to miss out and that they were going to play Blakey.

"But I am very tight with Sam and Walks. I just said to them 'get me to Finals Day and I'll win you the competition'."

Stevens' seven fours in his unbeaten 47, in 28 balls, in the semi-final win over much fancied Sussex was certainly a key factor - and he then played his part in a superb team performance in the final as Kent won in the end with ease.

Although, after Daniel Bell-Drummond's 100 runs on the evening, Jordan Cox and Zak Crawley's knocks in the final and a combined five-wicket haul for spinners Qais Ahmad and Joe Denly - Stevens' fellow survivor from Kent's 2007 win - others had starring roles too.

And, as for Cox's amazing relay catch with Matt Milnes, Stevens admitted: "I've never seen anything like that catch before."

Stevens has been a T20 winner before, first with Leicestershire at Edgbaston in 2004, with Kent back again in Birmingham in 2007, and also Dhaka Gladiators in the Bangladesh Premier League in 2013.

And now he is only the fourth man (after his former Foxes team-mates Paul Nixon and Claude Henderson, as well as Australian Dan Christian, with Hampshire and twice with Notts) to win the T20 in England three times.

"I'm not generally a man of few words," he said when BBC Radio 5 Live stuck a mic under his nose as he left the pitch on Saturday. "But I feel pretty speechless."

Even at 45, almost speechless and after eight hours of almost incessant cricketing intensity, he still found the right words though.

"It's days like this that I'm still playing the game for."