Dickson: 'It was a fire within me to prove they made the wrong decision'

Sean Dickson is a sports psychologist in training and does not have to look far to find a compelling case study for his second career.

On Saturday night, Dickson walked out to play his final innings for Somerset at Taunton's County Ground determined to prove the club's management had made a mistake in not offering him a new contract; 43 minutes later, he walked off having dragged them to T20 Blast Finals Day almost single-handedly.

"I was very clear on what I wanted to do: I wanted to sign off, and I wanted to sign off properly," Dickson says. "It was a fire within me to go and prove that they've made the wrong decision, and I wanted to show them that… Normally, nerves are flowing, but I just took a deep breath, looked around, and just took it in for a bit. I set out to go and prove a point."

He proved it emphatically, hitting 71 not out off 26 balls. Somerset needed 33 off the last two overs, then 19 off the final five balls; Dickson took them across the line in four. "That was my best T20 innings," he says. "Everyone wants to be in that position where they need to score 20 off the last over and hit sixes to win the end of the game… It's quite nice to say I've done it."

Few would have seen it coming when Dickson, once a first-class triple-centurion with Kent, first signed for Somerset three years ago, ostensibly to strengthen their red-ball batting. He has struggled in the Championship, averaging 20.41, but his T20 record for Somerset is phenomenal: he averages 38.32 for them while maintaining a strike rate of 155.51.

Somerset's decision to let him go is not without logic, and Dickson acknowledges there is plenty of talent in the club's "remarkable" academy. They have several promising young batters - including Tom Lammonby, Archie Vaughan, and James and Thomas Rew - and know that they need to offer them first-team cricket across formats to keep hold of them in the longer term.

But he was clearly hurt by it nonetheless, describing the realisation that he would not be offered a deal as "heart-breaking". He will instead spend the next two seasons at Glamorgan, who have effectively signed him as a replacement for Sam Northeast; the proximity will enable his young family to stay put in the south-west, where his eldest daughter recently started school.

Dickson turned 34 last week and could have several years left ahead of him: during his time at London Spirit in the Hundred, he sought advice from coach Justin Langer on how he could become a "permanent player within the franchise system". But he is already setting himself up for life after cricket, launching a sports psychology business early last year.

His interest in the field started over a decade ago when he was diagnosed with generalised anxiety: "I just thought it was normal to have these situations where there was almost a dissociation from me being able to be in the present moment. It wasn't." He has since completed a masters in it, and is working towards his full accreditation.