Kent great Joe Denly to retire at end of 2026 season

Joe Denly has told Kent he will finish up at the end of the 2026 season. The 40-year-old first pulled on a Kent shirt in 2004, left for three years at Middlesex, then came back and stayed.

He played for England in Tests, ODIs and T20Is, yet it is the county that defined him. His first-class debut came more than twenty years ago and he kept turning up, season after season, as one of their most reliable batters.

That long run ends in 2026. Denly leaves behind a career that began in the early 2000s and never really left Kent.