Ben Martindale can count his senior appearances for Nottinghamshire on the fingers of one hand yet he already enjoys the same distinction as one of the club’s most decorated stars.

Like the just-retired Stuart Broad, who spent the last 16 years of his illustrious cricket career at Trent Bridge, Martindale has followed his father into the Nottinghamshire first team. He and England star Broad are two of only 15 Nottinghamshire players whose dads also played, going back to the founding of the club in 1841.

Their respective fathers were actually team-mates in the 1980s and early ‘90s, when Chris Broad opened the batting for Nottinghamshire as he did for England in 25 Test matches. Duncan Martindale made 76 first-team appearances, usually in the middle-order but for a brief period as Chris’s opening partner. On one occasion they put on 176 together for the first wicket against Warwickshire at Edgbaston.

Their sons, however, are far from contemporaries. Duncan had long retired from cricket and had forged a second career in teaching when Ben was born. Martindale junior was just five when Broad junior - already an England player - made his Nottinghamshire debut after moving from Leicestershire.

Yet Ben’s roots at Trent Bridge go back pretty much to that time. Brought up on the club’s doorstep in the Nottingham suburb of West Bridgford, family outings to watch his father’s old team in action form some of his earliest memories.

“I never saw my dad play but I’ve been coming here since I could walk and hold a bat really,” he said. “The intervals were always the highlight for me because I could get to play on the outfield.”

Clearly blessed with some of Duncan’s talent for the game, Ben - now 20 - helped his local junior school win a national schools competition and had his first taste of club cricket with Ellerslie Cricket Club, whose home ground is less than half a mile from Trent Bridge. 

By the age of 10 he was as familiar with the indoor school in the Radcliffe Road stand as he was with the Trent Bridge outfield. Nottinghamshire handed him a place in their academy and Martindale made his age-group debut in the county’s Under-14s in June 2017 in a team that included a precociously-gifted leg-spinner by the name of Rehan Ahmed, then aged just 12.

After a Second XI debut at the age of 16 only a couple of years, Martindale needed to plot a patient course, dividing his focus between his education at Nottingham High School and subsequently Leeds Beckett University. He needed to wait until last season’s 50-over competition to earn a senior debut.

This season, though, has seen a breakthrough, with more than 500 Second XI runs and a maiden senior half-century in Nottinghamshire’s Metro Bank One-Day Cup win over Essex. The improvement, he says, is down to having a full winter to train for the first time in his career.

“I had my first fall winter of training without any interruptions,” he said. “I’d previously been juggling with Uni commitments, and then there was the Covid season, so I hadn’t really been able to train fully.

“I’ve switched to an Open University course so that working around the cricket has been a lot easier and I’ve really been able to look into my game, finding my weaknesses and working on a lot of things.

“So I feel I’ve progressed a lot since last year. There are still things I want to improve but I’m feeling a lot better about myself going into matches.  I feel confident, which is the main thing.”

Recently rewarded with a three-year contract, Ben is a left-handed batter who bowls right-arm seam, although the other side of his all-round game has had to take a back seat lately because of back issues. As a batter, he is never happier than when opening the innings, which he will do alongside Ben Slater through the One-Day Cup campaign.

“I can understand why some players prefer to be coming in when there are runs on the board and the shine has gone off the ball, but I’m happiest batting when the ball is hard and there are gaps in the field,” he said. 

Rain all day denied him the chance to walk out in a competitive match at Trent Bridge for the first time when the Outlaws’ match against Yorkshire was a complete wash-out. With the remainder of Nottinghamshire’s home fixtures in the One-Day Cup to be played at Welbeck Cricket Club in the north of the county, that pleasure may have to wait until next season.

“Actually, there are lots of positives in that,” he said. “I like playing at Welbeck, you get a good crowd in so it is a decent atmosphere. They produce good wickets with a bit in it for the seamers, so there is a good balance between bat and ball.”

Dad Duncan, now a retired teacher, will likely be among the crowd. “It’s a bit of a hobby for him, watching me play,” Ben said. “He often brings my grandma along. It is nice to be able to look around and see them in the crowd when I’m playing.”