Joining the county that had finished bottom of Division Two for three successive seasons was always going to be a gamble but Neil Dexter’s confidence in the future has been rewarded
Jon Culley30-Jun-2016Neil Dexter’s decision to leave a county that finished runners-up in Division One last season to join the one that had finished bottom of Division Two for three seasons in a row might have seemed somewhat perverse looking from the outside.At 31, he could not afford to make the wrong choice, but he says he felt confident from the outset and after half a season in his new surroundings nothing has happened to make him question his wisdom. His contribution already includes two centuries, the second against Gloucestershire this week.Leicestershire’s tight grip on the wooden spoon did not loosen despite the euphoria last June of ending their extraordinary 37-match winless streak in four-day cricket, but they have metamorphosed this season into potential promotion contenders – 15 points off the top with a game in hand and a bedraggled season still to take shape.”It was a hard decision to leave Middlesex,” Dexter admitted. “Things were always good at Middlesex. I enjoyed my time there working with good people.”But I wanted to bat higher up the order than I had been doing with Middlesex and when I sat down with Wasim Khan and Andrew McDonald to discuss coming here they were very clear in their plans and about what they wanted to achieve.”It is a club with clear direction and I was confident that it was going to be a good move. And so far I’ve enjoyed every minute of it here.”Khan and McDonald sold their vision, too, to Essex’s Mark Pettini and Lancashire’s Paul Horton as they moved to add quality, experience and a vital winning mentality to the squad. All three have had a positive impact on the dressing room environment.”We are quite a tight knit bunch already,” Dexter said. “In terms of where we are heading and what we are trying to achieve over the next few years we are already on the right lines.”If anything we have got to where we are as a team and a club a bit quicker than I thought.”There are times when things are tough. The T20 has tested us a team but it shows how strong we are the way the team is bouncing back in the four-day stuff on the back of disappointment.”In cricketing terms, then, it has been a good move. Where Middlesex felt they could make no guarantees of a regular first-team place – even though managing director of cricket Angus Fraser was willing to talk about a new contract – Leicestershire see him as just the right fit.For Dexter, moreover, there has been an unexpected bonus in moving out of the hustle and bustle of live in London. It has reminded how much he appreciates a less frenetic way of life.”I won’t lie, I struggled at times with living in London,” he said. “I think it is a hard place, so busy from the moment you walk out of your front door and until you get out of it again you don’t realise how tough a place it is to live.”Maybe it is the way I’ve been brought up. And I started in Kent, too, where the atmosphere is a bit more relaxed.”I’ve got a young family now and having a bit more of a relaxed life and a bit more family time, time when you can get away and it actually feels like you are away from cricket – it’s really good.”What’s more, he says, Grace Road feels like a proper home ground, something that Lord’s, for all its history and its status as the ‘home of cricket’, can never really be for a Middlesex player.At Grace Road, unlike Lord’s, Dexter feels he has a permanent home•PA Photos”Don’t get me wrong, I loved my time at Middlesex and to play at Lord’s every other week is a privilege I will never forget,” he said. “But Lord’s never really felt like home. When you don’t own your own ground, you can’t ever really call it home.”Here, when you leave the ground you can leave stuff in the dressing room but at Lord’s, although the Middlesex players have lockers, you had to appreciate that the dressing rooms had to be cleaned, maybe for a charity match or something involving other teams and you couldn’t just leave your gear behind.”Inevitably, too, because the area around Lord’s isn’t the cheapest, the players live some distance away, so if you needed something at short notice you couldn’t just nip back to the ground to get it.”And you didn’t know from one day to the next where you were going to be training. Lord’s and MCC have worked really hard over the last few years to try to get the players more time in the Lord’s nets so we didn’t have to go elsewhere but it was always going to happen that you sometimes had to.”You have to accept that, though, and there are many advantages. The people at Lord’s and the Middlesex members were great to me. I left on very good terms, I still follow them closely and I wish them well.”They remember him with affection, too, as the captain of the side that won promotion as Division Two champions in 2011, which is something on his CV, along with more than 6000 runs and over 100 wickets in his first-class career, that commands respect at Grace Road, where he is only too willing to share the benefits of his experience.”People ask me about coaching and I’m not sure,” he said. “I feel I have more to contribute as a player first. But I like working one-to-one with the younger guys, just chatting to them. I love being able to pass on some experience and knowledge and it would be great if I can help them move on to the next level because they are the future of the club.”Leicestershire remain third, with the top two, Essex and Kent, about to meet at Chelmsford. Does he think their recovery can be so pronounced that in a season in which only the winners of Division Two go up they have a serious chance of promotion?”When I was at captain at Middlesex I was never one to make predictions,” he said. “You can look too far ahead sometimes. You can talk but you’ve got to back it up with actions.”All we can do is play good cricket and there are a lot of games to come. I wouldn’t like to say we can’t get promotion but I’m not going to say we will.”What is good is that as well as the matches we have won, we have been competitive most of the time and in the rain-affected games we have won a lot of sessions.”It is what happens now that counts, at the business end of the season. If you can go on a winning streak at the right time you can be away.”
