Neil Dexter emerged on the county scene as one of Kent's Kolpak-qualified South African contingent in the summer of 2005. He made an instant impact, hitting 79 not out on debut against Nottinghamshire. Towards the end of the 2008 season, he turned down a three-year contract with the county and signed for Middlesex. His Middlesex debut came in the infamous Stanford Super Series in the Caribbean, but Dexter showed he had the talent for four-day cricket too as he averaged 41.70 with the bat in 2009 and an even more impressive 47.73 in 2010. Around him, Middlesex were struggling. When Shaun Udal resigned from the captaincy early in 2010 the position eventually landed in Dexter's hands. Alongside the thoughtful guidance of Angus Fraser as cricket director, Dexter led Middlesex to the Division Two title in 2011.

But Dexter found it difficult to balance the demands of captaincy alongside his playing role in the team. Early in the 2012 season, he relinquished the four-day captaincy to concentrate on his batting (and useful medium-paced bowling) and then, before the start of the 2014 campaign, it was announced that Dexter would hand the reins to Eoin Morgan in both limited-over competitions. While he continued to be a batsman of panache, Dexter was far too inconsistent. But, with his seam bowling occasionally lethal under cloud cover, he remained a useful player and Middlesex extended his stay until the end of the 2015 season, at which point in a search for a secure future he accepted a three-year contract from Leicestershire.

His decision to leave a county that finished runners-up in Division One to join the one that had finished bottom of Division Two for three seasons in a row seemed somewhat perverse from afar. But his first season with Leicestershire was a decent one: he made three hundreds as he just fell short of 1,000 Championship runs and was a useful support bowler. The bustle of London had not suited him, he said, and Lord's was not idea for a Middlesex player. "When you don't own your own ground, you can't ever really call it home," he said.

ESPNcricinfo staff