By Mark Bristow

Left-arm spinner Matt Luksich has spoken of his decision to quit The Mote after six years in favour of Kent League Premier Division cricket with Tunbridge Wells.

Luksich, 28, was the leading wicket-taker in the Kent League Championship last season with 35 dismissals for The Mote, but the club fell short in their aim of a return to the league’s top flight for the first time since 2011, having occupied a promotion spot for more than half the campaign.

“It was a tough decision to leave The Mote because as a group we had become really close and we were playing some really good cricket,” Luksich explained. “At one point I thought we were going to win the league.”

However, The Mote’s season derailed dramatically at the season’s midway point after a home defeat by local rivals Leeds & Broomfield that resulted in five of their players, Luksich excluded, serving either one or two-match bans after being reported by an umpire for disciplinary issues.

“We didn’t hit our stride after that,” Luksich admitted.

“That was a shame because before that we were winning games even when they were going against us, such was the confidence we had. We only won a couple of games between losing to Leeds and the remainder of the season.”

For The Mote, who begin their league campaign away to relegated Canterbury at Polo Farm on May 10, last year was definitely an opportunity missed, particularly having won three of their four games against the two promoted sides, Bromley and Holmesdale.

A highlight for Luksich was claiming the wicket of Kent’s Tawanda Muyeye in one of the Zimbabwean’s few games for Bromley in 2024, for 41, in an 81-run victory for The Mote in which the spinner took personal league best figures of 6-22 in 8.4 overs.

It was such performances that convinced Luksich to pursue his ambitions in the top tier with the Nevill Ground club.

“I just wanted to play at the highest possible level while I was still in my 20s and bowling well,” Luksich added.

“My wife Emma and I are moving to the area, so it was the obvious choice and fortunately I already knew a couple of the Tunbridge Wells guys.

“I’ve played a couple of friendlies for them, getting 2-29 against East Molesey last weekend and getting 26 off 21 balls against Preston Nomads the week before. It’s just been a question of shaking the dust off before the start of the league season.”

Johannesburg-born Luksich arrived at The Mote as a 22-year-old in 2019 and was sold on the club and the area sufficiently enough to move to England where in the early days of his time here he allied his cricket to coaching at Cranbrook School.

Emma, who teaches children with learning difficulties, followed him to Maidstone the next year and Luksich concluded: “I found the club through a cricket agency and, to start with, the intention was to just spend a gap year after university playing cricket in England.

“At the time we had people like Glen Aukett [now The Mote chairman] and James Hodgson still playing and although they retired and the first team has changed quite a bit since I arrived, we remained close as a team.

“Of course I shall miss the players a great deal but also the ground. It might not host county cricket any longer but it’s still a special place to play.”

The departure of a player who has taken 65 Championship wickets in the past two seasons leaves a considerable void for The Mote to fill in the 30th anniversary year of their 1995 Premier Division triumph.

Experienced Linden Park all-rounder Max Campbell will be hoping to fill part of that void having also had spells with Canterbury and Whitstable elsewhere in the Kent League, while Jamaican Nick Nelson, who contributed strongly to the club’s second XI in the past two seasons, gets a chance of first-team cricket on residential grounds.

South African Dylan DeVilliers, meanwhile, is back for a third stint as overseas player having amassed 402 league runs and 26 wickets in 2024.

And after the visit to Canterbury there will be no better game to bring early zest to the season than their first home fixture with fierce local rivals Leeds, who will like nothing better than to reprise the victory that so unsettled The Mote’s promotion charge 10 months ago.