COVERED WINTER 2019

21 JOIN OUR MAILING LIST FOR ALL THE LATEST: TRENTBRIDGE.CO.UK/MAILINGLIST season Championship travails, Clarke was to contribute a succession of crucial cameos in the Blast too. Both tournaments were, however, to end in semi-final heartache. At their mention, he is visibly pained. “After all the build-up, when a game like that goes against you, it’s heart- breaking – because you know how much it means to all the players and everybody involved in the club,” he says. “We were flying in confidence before we played Somerset in the one-day competition, but we came up against a better side on the day. “It was a shame because we’d played so well in the group stages, but we simply hadn’t performed on the big stage. “Credit to Somerset.They went on and thoroughly deserved to win the competition. “The T20, for it to go down to the last ball for a place in the final and not go our way, it was just devastating.” A mainstay at the top of the group stage order, averaging a respectable 28, Clarke had missed out on the quarter- final victory against Middlesex as the coaching staff reasoned – ultimately with justification – that they could hold back a champing-at-the-bit Chris Nash no longer. Restored to the team for the semi-final following back-to-back red-ball hundreds, Clarke was reduced to a watching brief from the dugout as the run-chase went west, situated behind Tom Moores, Steven Mullaney and Samit Patel in the order. Away from the middle, away from the action and away from any semblance of control, Clarke could hardly bear to watch as his chances of back-to-back titles – having won withWorcestershire in 2018 – slipped away. “As a sportsman, of course I was sat thinking ‘get me in, get me in, I want to be the one to do it’. I felt like I could have made the difference,” he says. “But the lads who went in before me will have all been thinking the same. “I STILL 100% BELIEVE WE’RE AMONG THE TOP WHITE- BALL SIDES IN THE COUNTRY.” Joe Clarke JOE CLARKE