Same as it ever was? Low morale and the lessons of history

Head Coach Adam Hollioake admitted morale was low in the dressing room after the Worcestershire defeat and the fan base is similarly disenchanted. Nicholas Coote has been a fan for over 50 years and he can’t be accused of wearing rose-tinted spectacles.

“Whist it entirely correct to observe that we are only three games into the long red ball season, for many loyal and long suffering Kent supporters there's already a sense of impending doom about the county's prospects this campaign,” he said. “The undeniable reality is, but for the weather, Kent would have comfortably lost their opening three fixtures.”

“For many fans, there is a genuine sense of helplessness ..."

You can argue with this assessment, but only to a point: Kent might have won at Durham, but the WinViz was probably only 20 percent when the team shook hands. Against Northants and Worcestershire there was no point when they were even competitive and as Coote points out, it’s part of a wider pattern.

“We need to put this unsatisfactory start in the context of last season's debacle which of course followed an entirely justified relegation from Division One,” he said. “For many fans, there is a genuine sense of helplessness as the county are essentially stuck in a rut of continuous, unfettered failure.”

It probably does seem that way if you’ve been watching red-ball cricket for the past three seasons. Kent won just twice in 2023, once in 2024 and twice last year. And if you started watching Kent in the 1970s, as a large percentage of the membership did, it’s dificult to accept the club’s current station.

The county won nine trophies in the decade (not including the shared championship of 1977), but that era also needs context. In the 20 seasons after World War Two, Kent didn’t come higher than fifth. At the back end of the 60s there signs something special was brewing and the club won the Gillette Cup in 1967, but the situation remained precarious.

After a (financially) disastrous 1969, the club committee gambled on giving Colin Cowdrey what he called a “full and comprehensive staff”. Yet halfway through the 1970 season Kent were bottom of the championship table and Cowdrey wrote "there were moments in 1970 when life should have been infinitely preferable on the moon".

You can imagine how that season would have played out on social media and yet the gamble produced a decade so successful it’s the reason so many of the current membership are still watching.

"If you’re middle-aged and started watching in the 90s you’ll be familiar with a different kind of failure ...

And at least they lived through that era: If you’re middle-aged and started watching in the 90s you’ll be familiar with a different kind of failure. In 1997 Kent were in a title-race with Glamorgan and it’s as difficult to imagine writing that sentence now as it was trying to imagine, at the time, that we wouldn’t get more than a whiff over the next three decades.

In 2021 the club were confident of challenging, with Matt Walker saying it was the most talented group of cricketers he’d worked with in a long time. Winning Division Three probably wasn’t what they had in mind, but it never is easy for clubs like Kent, even or perhaps especially, when they’re winning.

"To be honest we couldn’t afford the champagne we drank..."

In Cowdrey’s autobiography, M.C.C. he writes of the 1970 title: “Thrilling and gratifying though it was, it brought only temporary relief from the pressing problems of finance. To be honest we couldn’t afford the champagne we drank and shared with friends that September evening in the dressing rooms at The Oval.”

If this all sounds a bit downbeat, let’s try to end on an upbeat note. Kent didn’t challenge for the championship in 2021, but The Blast was some consolation prize. When it was followed with the 50-over trophy in 2022 it was, excluding the seventies, the first time since 1910 that Kent’s men's side had won honours in successive seasons.

Throw in the Division Three title and that means in the last five years we’ve won three trophies; ergo you could argue this is one of the most statistically succesful five-year periods in the county’s history. I wouldn't, however, advise Simon Cook to open with this line at the next member’s forum.