Next in our series profiling legends of club cricket, Scott Oliver picks out a strokemaker from Southend who’s still piling on the runs as he approaches his 50th season. Originally published in Wisden Cricket Monthly.

Down through the ages and across all levels of the game, loyalty versus ambition forms a perennial dilemma – the sting for a middling club to lose their best and most ambitious talent, the late-career regrets for the stalwart who spurns the brighter lights.

The first was with Ecko Monarchs, with whom, as EMT, they worked their way up the Mid-Essex League from Division Three to the top tier, winning a couple of titles. As well as run-scoring, Grant devoted himself to setting up the club’s junior sections, stepping down to the third XI to spread his boyish enthusiasm.

In 2010, EMT merged again, forming Southend-on-Sea and Ecko Monarchs and Trojans CC, who joined the Shepherd Neame Essex League. Back in first XI cricket, Grant helped the club to two promotions in three years – averaging 54, 53 and 48. Since then he’s stepped off the gas, playing two seasons of second XI cricket – averaging 67 and 54 – before a couple of years concentrating on Essex over 50s, with whom he’s played three national finals in four years, “sadly, losing all three”.

Redundancy has led Grant to set up a burgeoning kids coaching business that now sees him working with Chance to Shine, helping introduce cricket to state schools. And after a two-year break from Saturday cricket, he’s enjoying a second summer at Abberton in the Two Counties League, “visiting many of the Essex grounds I’ve never played at, plus a few in Suffolk”.

Yet the gravitational pull of home remains strong. “I think I’ll be back”, he says. “My 50th season is coming, and that probably should be back at Trojans.”

Read more from the Wisden Club Cricket Hall of Fame series