Although foreign celebrities don't always love the English climate, Daniel Sams isn't one to moan. The torrential downpours that have abruptly ended the English summer every time the sun has appeared have been a bit of home comfort.
“It’s been a bit wet… but it has been raining heaps in Sydney,” he concedes with a grin.
But Sams can settle in Chelmsford without the aid of Mother Nature. The Australian is returning for his third stint as a foreign player for Essex in the T20 Blast, and he is a local expert.
As someone who travels much, always switching between franchise tournaments and cities, Chelmsford has turned into a somewhat secure sanctuary for him.
“My wife Danii has come with me to England every time and it is like a home away from home because we end up spending a fair bit of time here with the Hundred on the back end of the Blast,” he told Mail Sport. “It’s different for each couple and each family, but coming out of Covid I think we’ve seen a shift in families and partners coming (away) a lot more. I think there has been a little shift in that because there was a lot of time away from families during the Covid bubbles. I much rather it when Danii is with me. It’s helpful to have people around me who are a release outside of cricket. We just live as we would in Australia. Maybe it’s a little bit colder and a little bit wetter. We enjoy the lifestyle of England and the cricket.”
Naturally, even though they are over 10,000 miles away from their home in Sydney, there are still things they miss. Not to mention Ollie, the couple's cavapoo. And put aside for the foreseeable future is Sam's wood-fire oven, on which, by all reports, he cooks a mean rib-eye steak.
Sams acknowledges that his adjustment was aided by the Essex dressing room. The 31-year-old has discovered that, in the cutthroat world of T20 franchise cricket, this location is unlike most others.
“There’s a lot of trust. You’re trusted to go out and do your job, (but) you’re allowed to make mistakes which is super important as long as you’re learning from those mistakes and we’re all growing and getting better,” explained Sams, who won the last of his 10 T20 international caps against England in 2022. I remember the first season I’d come from the IPL playing with Mumbai Indians. It’s quite a full-on environment — if you don’t perform, you could just get dropped. Coming here, the first couple of games I hadn’t had any conversations about my role and what was expected and it was a real shock.”