FIVE Kent cricketers earned a passage to India on a 10-day winter training camp at the World Cricket Academy in Mumbai.

Kent’s coaching co-ordinator Simon Willis and new Academy director Phil Relph oversaw the trip together last month with first team squad players, Ashes winner Geraint Jones and Paul Dixey, who spent last summer at Durham University Centre of Cricketing Excellence, who were also on hand, not only to practice themselves, but to also add their experience to training sessions with three Kent Academy Scholars.

Among the three lucky academy inductees selected for this year’s camp on the east coast of India were James Iles, a Kent League seam bowler for Lordswood and Kent’s youngest ever first-class cricket having made his debut for the county in 2006 at the tender age of 16 years and 95 days.

He was joined by Sam Billings a wicketkeeper-batsman for Hartley Country Club and left-handed batsman and off-spinner Chris Piesley, who plays for Gore Court.

The visit organised under the Global Cricket School scheme is the second Kent have made to the Mumbai centre of excellence and was partially funded by a generous £4,000 donation from the Kent County Cricket Supporters’ Club.

In thanking the supporters’ club for their backing, Willis said: “Once again this has been a fantastic effort from the supporters’ club to raise their contribution and, if funds allow, the plan is to go to India every January for here on.

“You could take a whole academy team on tour, but the reality is it would cost a fortune and take a good time to organise, so we feel it’s better to invest the time and money into a few lads who we feel have a great chance of making the grade.

“You get to know them inside out as people in the 10 days and find out how they feel and respond when they wake up in the morning having had a tough day’s work the day before, those are the sorts of things you can’t see coaching these boys in the indoor school in Canterbury.

“Some of that off the field stuff gives you a better idea of their personalities and whether they have the character to go that extra mile in the tough world of professional cricket.”