Exit of stalwarts Stevens and Hildreth reminds English cricket what it is losing

The announcements have fallen like raindrops in the last few days. Jonny Bairstow has joined the Abu Dhabi Knight Riders, Jos Buttler has signed for the Paarl Royals, Samit Patel, Will Smeed and Jordan Thompson have all been picked up by Mumbai Indians’ Emirates team, Sam Curran and Liam Livingstone by their side based in Cape Town. Each one is a sign of changing times. It felt like two smaller, but more significant, press releases out of county cricket got lost among the rush. Darren Stevens has been released by Kent, after 26 seasons on the circuit, and James Hildreth has retired from Somerset, after 19.

Stevens hasn’t given up on cricket yet. He told the BBC: “I still feel like I can do a job with bat and ball,” and you can imagine him saying much the same thing to the nurse leaning over him on his deathbed. Stevens, who has the indefatigable optimism of a man who has spent his 40s bowling medium pace against the best batsmen in England, was never going to leave the game of his own volition. Hildreth, though, really has finished. He was going to play out the rest of the season, but he brought his retirement forward after he injured a hamstring in a one-day game against Durham last week. It’s a quietly understated exit for a quiet and understated player.

You’ll find the two of them right near each other in the list of the County Championship’s leading run-scorers. Stevens is 222nd, with 15,740, Hildreth is two places behind him, 224th, with 15,698. There isn’t another player around now in the top 250, or even anywhere close. Of course, the two had more opportunity to do it, because neither ever played international cricket, although both came close. You could argue into the night about which of them you might describe