Harshad Vallabhbhai Patel (born 29 January 1964) is a Kenyan-born

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former

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officia ...

er. A cousin of the

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Test cricketer Dipak Patel, he was born in

Nairobi Nairobi ( ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase ''Enkare Nairobi'', which translates to "place of cool waters", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper h ...

in January 1964. After emigrating to England, Patel played

for

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

on a single occasion in 1985 against

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. Opening the batting alongside Lawrence Smith in Worcestershire's only innings, he was dismissed for 37 runs by Archie Cotterell. Patel did not feature for Worcestershire following this match. He joined Staffordshire in 1988, featuring for the county in

minor counties The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes unde ...

cricket until 1990, and also made his debut in List A one-day cricket for the county against Glamorgan in the

1989 NatWest Trophy The 1989 NatWest Trophy was the 9th NatWest Trophy. It was an English limited overs county cricket tournament which was held between 28 June and 2 September 1989. The tournament was won by Warwickshire who defeated Middlesex by 4 wickets in th ...

, scoring 63 runs in a losing cause against their first-class opponents. After a two year break from county cricket, Patel joined

Herefordshire Herefordshire () is a county in the West Midlands of England, governed by Herefordshire Council. It is bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthsh ...

in 1992, with the county having just been admitted to minor counties cricket to replace

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who had been elevated to first-class status. Patel remained as a player with Herefordshire until 2012, making 103 appearances in the Minor Counties Championship and 38 appearances in the

MCCA Knockout Trophy The National Counties Cricket Association Knockout Cup was started in 1983 as a knockout one-day competition for the National Counties in English cricket. At first it was known as the ''English Industrial Estates Cup'', before being called the ...

. In the Minor Counties Championship, he scored over 6,000 runs for Herefordshire, with eight

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. He also made twelve List A appearances for Herefordshire when they were permitted to take part in the domestic one-day competition, scoring 196 runs with a highest score of 68. Harshad later coached Herefordshire and led them to victory in the 2016 MCC Knockout Trophy. His tenure as coach ended in 2017, with Patel considering himself to have been made a scapegoat by the Herefordshire committee for the lack of Herefordshire based players in the county eleven.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Patel, Harshad 1964 births Living people Cricketers from Nairobi Kenyan emigrants to the United Kingdom English cricketers Worcestershire cricketers Staffordshire cricketers Herefordshire cricketers English cricket coaches