18 Questions for James Tredwell

You took 8/66 to wrap up Kent’s Championship win v Glamorgan in May. Did you feel unstoppable?

I did a bit, actually. Once they started rolling, it was quite nice. I was quite lucky I had some foot-holds to bowl into and I thought, ‘If I keep landing them there, I’ll cause some trouble…’ I had five or six round the bat. It was like days of old, like the pictures you see of Derek Underwood and stuff…

Have you ever had a proper job?

I did removals for a couple of winters for a friend who ran a removal company on Romney Marsh. Lugging wardrobes around. Packing stuff up in boxes. Quite good fun. 

What’s the biggest hammering you’ve taken in Twenty20?

I suppose in the T20 final last year. Owais Shah smacked a few off me. Three sixes on the trot. Which being in the final was not ideal. What did I do? Just tried and get it as close to his toes as possible so he couldn’t get under it to hit another one, really.

Do you get heckled by the crowd in Twenty20?

Yes. I think everyone does, don’t they? The best one was a few years ago – before I lost a bit of weight – walking backwards to the boundary at Chelmsford after walking in for the previous ball, the crowd started making the HGV-reversing beep-beep-beep noise. That was quite funny. It’s pretty tough at Chelmsford, actually. It’s when you get the little eight or nine-year-olds just peering over the advertising boards and having a go at you that makes it… an experience. 

Which spinners do you look up to?

Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Saqlain Mushtaq and when I was growing up, John Emburey. 

What’s your favourite film?

Saving Private Ryan. I’ve seen that a fair few times. Why? I find the whole war thing very interesting, the second World War more than the first probably. And Saving Private Ryan really gives you a sense of what it was like to be there, I think. I’ve just really got into watching Band of Brothers, too. About 12 hour-long episodes about a paratroop company, based on true stories. Very interesting.

Shane Warne and all that chatting to the umpire: cheating? 

Not really. I think it’s fair game play, really. He’s trying to make the most of it. It suits him he’s that sort of character, but it’s not something I’d find easy to do. Talking to the umpires and players got him a few more wickets. 

Why do spinners get better as they get older? 

You start to understand your own game more and start to work out ways of bowling and game plans. As a junior pro you tend to just run up and bowl and rely on your natural talent. When you get older, you’ve seen the batters before, so you can work them out and set up game-plans for them. So your improvement isn’t necessarily in terms of your talent rather than how you use it.

Do you appear in any cricket computer games?

A couple of my mates have said they’ve played games as me. I’m not into games so I haven’t seen myself but I’ve heard that I feature. I don’t know if they’ve got my hairstyle right, though.

Kent’s 2008 Twenty20 campaign: success or failure?

Well, it was a success because we got to the final, I guess. But to get that close and then lose can make it worse. If you lose by 100 runs, you know you deserved it – to go to the last ball feels worse. From that point on we lost our way a bit in the season. We’ve got quite a small squad so even without injuries people were getting a little bit jaded towards the end and it took its toll. I’m not saying it was just the T20 and Friends Provident finals defeats that did it, but they probably had a part to play.

What was your first car?

A Ford Fiesta B reg when I was 17. No radio, no headrests, very basic. Just a shambles. I got it for free from a family friend. Which was fine for a first car. Now I have a Ford Fusion, a ridiculously practical car. Economical. I’ve been doing a lot of work on the garden and you can flatten the seats down and make it half-truck, half-Ford Fiesta.

What was the first cricket game you went to see?

Probably my old man playing for Folkestone. I was taken to every game as soon as I was born. I never really went to watch professional sport – I was more into playing, so the first big game I saw was probably a Kent one-dayer just when I was getting involved at youth level.

If you could play for an international team apart from England, who would it be?

Australia. Because, for one thing, they’re looking for a spinner and also because they play the game in the right way: very aggressively on the field and, from my experience playing club cricket over there, they enjoy it away from the game as well.

Is Graeme Swann really a better bowler than Monty Panesar?

In my opinion… he’s a very good bowler. Monty’s not quite at the top of his game at the moment and Swanny is – so at the moment he’s probably bowling better than Monty.

You’ve opened the batting and gone in at No 9 and all points in between. What’s best?

I enjoy opening. The challenge of the new ball. But it’s also quite nice coming in at 7 or 8 and knocking the old ball around…

You were captain of England at under-19 level. Will you be captain of England again?

Well, who knows? It’d be nice wouldn’t it? I’ve done captaincy throughout my life, really, from under-11s, under-12s and I like to think I have a decent cricket brain, so who knows maybe it’s something I’ll go into at a later date.

Did you learn anything from playing with Murali at Kent?

In terms of technique he’s one of a kind, so to learn anything from his action that you can use is difficult. But talking to him about game plans and field placings was useful.

What do you remember about your Kent debut?

It was against Leicestershire at Grace Road, in 2001. I was due to be playing for England under-19s at Hove but Min Patel woke up with a stiff neck so they called me up. I had to get on a train from Brighton to London and then onto Leicester. I got there just before tea and I was allowed to bowl straight away. 

Shortly after tea, Aftab Habib, who had 150 tried to smack me out of the ground and I bowled him. In the second innings, Shahid Afridi hit me for two massive sixes then hit one so high in the air that if it had been as long as it was high would have gone out of Leicester. But luckily Andrew Symonds was under it…

• This interview first appeared in Kent Cricket, produced for Kent CCC by SPIN magazine. For details of Kent memberships and fixtures, see www.kentccc.com

Joe Denly speaks exclusively to SPIN

First game for Kent It was quite memorable, actually. It was against Oxford Univerisity. I opened with Michael Carberry and got a golden duck and two overs later they came off for rain and we never went out for three more days. Not a great start…

First 100 I was 12. It was for my school in a 20-over game, which was all we used to play. I think I got 125 not out. My dad bought me a book to record every 100 I got from there on in. Have I still got the book? It’s at home somewhere. Obviously, I haven’t kept it right up to date. I got bored of it after I got to 17 or 18 hundreds about four or five years ago.

I went to Chaucer Technology School, a local school, nothing posh. Cricket wasn’t the big thing and not a lot of people played it. So, yes, I might have been the best player but that wasn’t saying all that much because we played on a council field with an artificial mat. But I always played down at my local club Whitstable.

First club game I started out as aa seam bowler who came in at six or seven. I started in the third team when I was about 13 and made my way into the first team when I was about 15.

First first class wicket Mark Ramprakash. did I bamboozle him with my leg-spin? Not really, no: they needed about 20 to win with not long left and was trying to get on with it he ran down the wicket at me and I managed to turn one and got him stumped. I’ve got Stuart Law out as well. Why don’t I bowl more often? Ask Keysy! I’m constantly asking him if I can bowl. I bowl in the nets quite a bit. I’m waiting for my opportunity. If I keep working at it and get some opportunities, I think I could definitely put myself in that all-rounders’ bracket.

First overseas player you played with at Kent Andrew Symonds, in my first Kent T20 game. Interesting. I got on quite well with him, actually. I was very young and pretty shy, just coming into the side. My first game was a T20 game against Middlesex at Maidstone and he got stuck into me as the Australians do. He was a good laugh and great to play in the same side as him and see how he goes about his stuff. I didn’t get a chance to bat with him in that game, but he hit 120 – in a Twenty20 game – so it was pretty extraordinary.

Last Kent overseas player played with Wayne Parnell. Extraordinarily, he’s only 20… he’s full of life, good to have in the changing room and everyone’s tipping him to have a bright future. People are already comparing him to Wasim Akram.

First proper job I used to work on a Saturday evening at my local fish and chip shop in Whitstable, washing up in the kitchens. Not brilliant. I was just stuck right at the back where the freezer was, so it was absolutely freezing. I did a paper round when I was very young then I did two or three weeks working in the offices for customs, basically splitting bits of paper and sorting out files. I wouldn’t have a clue what I’d do if I didn’t have cricket.

First game in England colours England under-19s v Bangladesh in 2004, when I was about 17. I opened with Alastair Cook. I missed out on all the under-15s and under-16s. Ravi Bopara was in there, James Hildreth, all these guys who had really dominated age-group cricket and were really thought of very highly. They were tipped to he up there even from a very young age so I was pretty nervous going in. I don’t think I scored a run in the whole series – my top score was a 50 in one of the last one-day games.

First CD bought The Backstreet Boyz. Or possibly Mark Morrison.

Last CD bought Kings of Leon

Last celebrity met Tom Chaplin, the lead singer from Keane. He’s on my phone. Him and his brother are linking up business wise with Dave Fulton, who is my agent. So I suppose Keane are my agents, in a way. So that could be quite good.

This interview appeared originally in Kent Cricket, the official programme of Kent CCC, produced by SPIN magazine