If Samit Patel was under any illusions about the way his England career was heading after he was withdrawn from the one-day series in the Caribbean for failing fitness tests then Kevin Pietersen was only too happy to tell him his fortune.
“Unfit, fat and lazy,” was Pietersen’s blunt assessment as an exhausting winter neared its end, a summation that brought less criticism for Patel than Pietersen himself as he was castigated from afar for a destructive absence of team spirit.
As Patel prepared for another extra gym session at Trent Bridge in an attempt to appease the England hierarchy and make the squad for World Twenty20, he offered a different take on Pietersen’s criticisms. His words, far from being cruel, were something that he needed to hear.
“Kev was being honest,” he said. “If he rates you, he rates you; if he doesn’t, he doesn’t. He brought me into the squad, he picked me, he supported me and then he told me I had to get fitter. He told me the truth. Kev is a good role model. He ticks all the boxes. Maybe sometimes you need to hear some straight talking.”
The 24-year-old Patel’s considerable talent is backed with brazen self-belief; he is the sort of player that Pietersen respects. On -England’s one-day tour of India before Christmas, his left-arm slows were pulverized by Virender Sehwag and co, but he fielded athletically and played several inventive and confident innings, as much as it was possible to do in the lower-middle order with the overs running out.
He heard strictures about his fitness levels and classified them under irrelevancies that would not affect his progress. Then on tour with England Lions in New Zealand, he got a call from Geoff Miller, the chairman of selectors, and his world fell apart.
“The call came on the back of a hundred at Queenstown in the first Test. I was feeling pretty good about myself and my cricket. He told me that I wasn’t going to go because I wasn’t fit enough. I didn’t know what to say. I had to take it on the chin and move forward. I was a bit stunned.
“We came back to Christchurch to practise and Dave Parsons, the coach, came up to chat to me on the practice day before the second Test and asked if I was mentally in the right state. I said, ‘Yeah, I want to play cricket.’ It was not my cricket that was the problem, it was the fitness.”
His conversation now wavers between old Patel – “It’s just my body shape” – and the new enlightened Patel who is committed to greater levels of fitness. The new Patel is dominant in his conversation, quickly correcting any relapse into old habits, but if this improved version now talks impressively one wonders whether it yet inhabits his soul.
“With a figure like mine I probably get pointed at more than others,” he said. “I also sweat a lot. It’s partly a perception. I am fit to play cricket, but the fitter you are the better you can perform and I can’t put it off any longer. It is one thing to be left out because of poor form but to be left out because of fitness is unacceptable. I was very disappointed in myself. I can’t blame anyone else.”
It will not be easy. “I have been trying to stay off the carbs at night and eat just three times a day.” Only three meals a day? How many did he used to eat? “I used to snack a bit. I think the crisps were a temptation but I am trying to cut them out. It’s going pretty well at the moment.”
Samit Patel should not be regarded as unambitious. Whether he has been misguided is a different matter. The Patels are a committed cricketing family. His brother, Akhil, who has moved across the Midlands from Deryshire to join him at Nottinghamshire, now does gym sessions with him, and will benefit just as much. His parents, Ron and Sejal, independently followed him throughout an exhausting India one-day series, spent endless hours awaiting flight connections, and were briefly stranded in Guwahati when the tour was abandoned because of the Mumbai terrorism attack. He will not be short of strong advice.
Mum is drastically cutting the amount of oil used in a traditional Indian diet. Ron, lithe and hyperactive, is a useful role model. Patel observed: “I know all about 7am gym sessions these days, but Dad gets up at half past four so I suppose I am still getting a lie-in. I realize it is an attitude thing with me and I have to put in the work, but it’s going to take some time.”
Kevin Paxton, Nottinghamshire’s fitness trainer, encapsulates the challenge ahead. “Samit will work all day on skills. We do a lot of high-intensity fielding sessions and he enjoys those too. He never wants to stop. The fitness work does not come naturally to him but these days you don’t see many cricketers who don’t work hard on their fitness. If we improve his fitness he will have the capacity to play longer innings, bowl after a long innings too, and concentrate more easily in the field. He is capable of meeting his targets, but a lot of it is down to him.”
At Chelmsford they were smiling about how Patel has already fallen off a treadmill in pre-season as presumably the ECB’s targets briefly became too much. But he remains undaunted. If confidence was calorific, he would never get the weight off.
“There is plenty of time for World Twenty20,” he said. “My aim is not to miss any cricket. My aim is to play for England all summer, definitely in the one-day game, and then if I get enough runs in four-day cricket, who knows? I am definitely not ruling anything out. I want to change my attitude and I want people to take notice.”
Guardian News & Media 2008
Published: 4/16/2009
