Samit Patel has announced his retirement from domestic cricket after being banned for playing in a 'disapproved' veterans' T20 league in Goa. The former England all-rounder admits he 'probably wouldn't have played' in the World Legends Pro T20 League if he had known it would lead to a ban from the T20 Blast this summer.
Patel, 41, and Australian bowler Peter Siddle are both prevented from playing domestic cricket for 12 months by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) after participating in the unauthorized league. As a result, Patel has decided to retire from English domestic cricket, though he will continue to play franchise cricket abroad.
'I probably wouldn't have played it,' Patel told BBC Sport. 'There was a lot of uncertainty about whether we could play or not, but we can't get past that now. It just brought this stuff forward for me.'
Patel played 60 times for England between 2008 and 2015 and spent 22 years at Nottinghamshire, making 629 appearances. He joined Derbyshire on a two-year white-ball deal in 2024 and was out of contract after last year's T20 Blast. He said he would have liked 'one more year' in domestic cricket if the ban had not occurred.
'I would have played this summer,' he said. 'I had some chats with some counties, we weren't quite at a contract signing but we were in talks, so probably would've got a last-minute deal somewhere.'
Patel and Ravi Bopara, who also retired earlier this year, are the only two players to have featured in every year of the Blast since its inception in 2003.
Patel made his first-class and List A debuts for Nottinghamshire as a teenager in 2002 and was part of their County Championship-winning sides in 2005 and 2010. He also won the One-Day Cup in 2013 and was instrumental in the Outlaws' double white-ball success in 2017, when he earned the PCA Player of the Year award. Across all formats, he finished his Nottinghamshire career with more than 25,000 runs and over 800 wickets. In his two years at Derbyshire, he scored 528 runs and took 33 wickets.