Player Biography

Matt Coles is a Kent Cricket Academy graduate who played age-group cricket for Kent at under 13, 15 and 17 levels before making his senior debut in 2009.

Matt had a season to remember in 2012, winning his county cap and a call-up to the England Lions.

The burly Maidstone-born seamer claimed 74 victims during a wicket-laden season and capped a golden period with a call-up to the England Lions squad. Well built, with genuine pace, Coles has all the needed attributes to develop into a fine strike bowler.

After an injury-hit 2011, he came into storming form, returning career-best First Class match figures of 9-83 against Northamptonshire, before claiming 6-32 against Yorkshire in the Clydesdale Bank 40 competition.

His 53 First Class wickets came at an average of just 22.58 and his 17 one-day scalps came at an even more impressive 16.52.

In Kent’s opening championship fixture of 2012, against Yorkshire at Headingley, the left-hander blasted 103 off just 111 balls to register his maiden first-class century.

He moved to Hampshire in 2013 where he signed a three-year deal and clinched promotion to Division One of the County Championship in 2014.

In March 2015, the Maidstone-born player returned to Kent and won Player and Bowler of the Year in his first season back in the Garden of England.

Coles took 100 wickets in all formats in 2015 including a ten-wicket match against Leicestershire at Grace Road.

He scored an extraordinary century off 73 balls in the 2015 Royal London One-Day Cup quarter-final against Surrey at The Oval.

In 2016, Coles managed only 40 first class wickets but still retained the Spitfire Bowler of the Year trophy after topping the wicket-taking charts with 24 in the Royal London One-Day Cup.

In 2017, he became the first bowler to take multiple white-ball hat-tricks for Kent after achieving one in the One-Day Cup against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in 2015, he repeated the feat in a T20 against Middlesex at Richmond. He joined Essex in October 2017.