FORMER England international Samit Patel has loved his title-winning first season with Hoylandswaine and is hoping for more success with the club next year.
The 40-year-old, who played just under 1,000 games in his professional career including 60 for England in all formats, signed for the Barnsley club at the beginning of the Huddersfield Premiership season.
After leaving professional club Derbyshire midway through the campaign, he played 23 games for Swaine in all competitions, scoring 534 runs and taking 41 wickets.
Swaine won the Huddersfield Premiership title on Saturday as the final day of the season was rained off.
Patel told the Chronicle: “It’s been great. Obviously it’s a new club for me.
“Winning a title is really, really good.
“Hopefully we can go a couple better next season and put some more silverware in the Hoylandswaine cabinet.
“We have a mutual agreement and I would love to come back.
“It’s a lovely club with lovely people.
“It helps that we’ve got a good cricket team. There are loads of really good players in the team.
“We are probably a little bit disappointed we’ve not won more than one trophy.
“We’ve played really good cricket and had the weather on the wrong side of us on a few occasions which has probably cost us in cup games.”
Patel is one of several former internationals to have played for Swaine, who often have a strong team with many players who have played professional cricket.
They are sometimes criticised for that.
Patel said: “It’s a free playing field, everybody is entitled to sign whoever they like.
“I am just fortunate to be playing at a club that can do that and to play with a nice group of players.
“I am used to batting at three in club cricket and I’ve batted at four here because we had such a good overseas (Harpreet Singh).
“The work always seemed to be done before I went in.
“It’s a situation I don’t normally find myself in in club cricket.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed it, the boys have been great and we have a real winning mentality which is good to see.”
Swaine were two points ahead of title rivals Rastrick going into the final game of the season which saw both sides’ matches washed out.
“We’d rather have played and won but you can’t help the weather.
“We were waiting to see if Rastrick called their game off and, as soon as they did, we called ours off. To be honest, it was never fit to play.”
Patel helped Swaine break a national record earlier this month when they made 592 for five off 50 overs.
After Ben Kohler-Cadmore and Luke Bridges scored double hundreds, Patel smashed 145 not out.
“I’ve been playing cricket for a while but that was absolutely new to me.
“It was a mad game of cricket and I’ve never seen anything like it.
“To score at a run-rate of 12 an over for 50 overs is crazy.
“I was sitting there watching the guys and joking that we would get 450. ‘Surely it can’t be more than that.’
“Because of the dimensions of the ground, if you get going it’s hard to stop someone.
“To get two double hundreds in one game is freakish. One is hard enough but to get two is ridiculous.
“I just put the icing on the cake.
“The platform was laid and it could have gone one of two ways – I could have got out straight away or I did what I did.
“Thankfully, it went the right way.”
