Joe Denly: ‘I went missing for a few years. I had to start enjoying it again’

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The Kent batsman talks about playing his way back to form and into England’s plans for the first time in nearly a decade

Joe Denly experienced an eight‑year gap between the last of 14 white-ball caps and his recent call-up for England’s Test tour to Sri Lanka. By his own admission he went missing for too much of it. But now 32 and revelling in a two-year purple patch that has seen him end the summer with a cheque for £10,000 as county cricket’s most valuable player, this elegant Kent right-hander and self‑taught leg-spinner has a second chance to live out a dream that at one stage was detrimentally all‑encompassing.

“I feel much better equipped and have a much better understanding, not just technically but also of the pressures that come with playing for England,” says Denly, who after a couple of ODI half-centuries in 2009 was dropped on the eve of the World Twenty20 the next year and seldom considered thereafter. “Before I was worried about what people thought of me and how I looked. The belief wasn’t quite there. When I got dropped by England, everything was about getting back in the team, putting a lot of pressure on myself.

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