Matt Walker is “open to anything” as he plots the next move of his cricket coaching career.
Walker is on the lookout for a new role, having left his position as Kent head coach after eight years at the helm.
The former Kent and Essex batsman initially coached at Essex after retirement before he returned to Kent while he has been an Oval Invincibles assistant coach since The Hundred competition was launched in 2021.
“It’s exciting,” said Walker. “I have had 19 years at Kent as a player and three years at Essex as a player, then coached there for two years.
“It’s been 10 years since I came back [to Kent, initially as assistant to Jimmy Adams] in 2014. This is all I’ve sort of known.
“It’s been brilliant and I have loved it, working at two fantastic clubs as a player and a coach, but I’m excited and I’m open to anything, really. That’s quite a nice thing to be able to say.
“The game is a bigger game than when I started coaching 12 years ago.
“Whether it’s staying in the game domestically, franchise cricket, women’s cricket, an international role or an assistant role, who knows what’s out there?
“We’ll see what comes up. I want to stay in the game. I certainly feel I have plenty to offer and I’m looking forward to a new challenge.
“It’s the right time [to leave Kent]. Regardless of what’s happened over the last three or four months, it’s definitely the right time.
“With what has happened, it makes it quite a clean break, actually, for someone else to come in.”
Few 50-year-olds will have anywhere close to the kind of experience Gravesend-born Walker does after close to a decade in charge of Kent.
And while he left in tough circumstances, Spitfires’ 2021 T20 Blast triumph means he is part of a select group to have won trophies with a county, both as a player and coach.
“As a head coach, eight years is probably the top-end of the shelf life,” he admitted. “Beyond that, it can become stale, no matter how you’re doing.
“It always needs a bit of a change from time to time and now is definitely the right time for that. But I’ve loved it.
“I’ve been very lucky to have this opportunity.
“It came to me relatively quite young in my coaching life but I knew, when you become a head coach, that it’s not going to be forever. The clock starts ticking the minute you start that role.
“Depending on how it all goes, it can be one or two years but – as it’s turned out – it’s been eight. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed everything.
“I know these last two years have been tough and it’s not been overly-enjoyable, for sure, but this bit won’t blur my love of this place and what we have achieved.
“It’ll be a very different role now – whatever it may be. Franchise cricket is a very different role where you’re not necessarily able to build relationships like you can in county cricket.
“It’s a very short-term thing and a different type of coaching but we’ll see.
“It may be that something comes up in the domestic game and I find myself back here as an opposition coach!”
