Jimmy Adams is confident Kent Cricket have a bright future after impressive performances by some of the club’s younger stars.

Despite having lost their last three Twenty20 games, Adams has been impressed by perfomances from the likes of Sam Billing, Sam Northeast and Adam Ball and has defended the decision not to play more senior players such as Mike Powell, Ben Harmison and Charlie Shreck in the shorter format of the game.

The Spitfires chances of making it to the T20 Quarter Finals hang my a thread and realistically they would have to win their remaining three games and hope for other results to go their way.

With that almost certainly spelling the end to this year’s campaign, Adams told KSN how he was looking to take the positives from some recent poor performances:

“The last week hasn’t been great. It’s been a combination of factors as I don’t think we’ve played as well as we can and we’ve run into some teams are pretty good exponents of T20 cricket.”

“The results haven’t been fantastic, but there have been some bright spots, despite the results. The team will keep growing, we’ll keep moving forward and move on.”

“The three young lads have done well and it’s good to see them under pressure, putting their hands up and wanting to be counted. I think that’s a very encouraging sign and definitely something we can build on going forward.”

“I think we have a group of young players that are capable of becoming very good across all the formats and this is part of their development process, if we are to build a successful T20 team.”

Bearing in mind the side look unlikely to make the Quarter Finals, some coaches would be tempted to make wholesale changes and look at other players that haven’t had opportunities in recent weeks, but Adams hinted he’d be keen to keep faith with the side that’s played the majority of the games so far:

“We have been pretty consistant in how we approach things and we obviously want to win the games we’ve still go to play. We will prepare as best we can and we’ll select the team we think gives us the best chance of winning.”

One person that saw a slightly different role on Friday night as the Spitfires lost to the Sussex Sharks was skipper Rob Key who dropped down the batting order to number three and Adams admitted there is a chance that could be the case to allow both Sam Northeast and Sam Billings more time to experience opening in Twenty20:

“We were reluctant to split up the two Sams who had batted so well in the game against Middlesex and they had earnt that right to keep opening. They deserved their chance and the captain supported that.”

With little time between games to assess the team’s performance as a whole, Adams told KSN he would look to sit down in the next week or so to see what the side could do better next time around:

“I think there are areas in this format of the game where we can get a lot stronger in. At the end of the competition, we’ll sit down and reflect on the tournament as a whole.”

“Long term, we will need to see where we need to strengthen certain areas, but I wouldn’t say it is just a bowling issue, as I think there have been games where we’ve been a few runs short of what we are capable of.”

The Spitfires are back in action again on Thursday night when they head to The Oval to take on the Surrey Lions before welcoming the Essex Eagles to Canterbury on Friday night.

They finish their T20 campaign against the Middlesex Panthers at Uxbridge on Sunday afternoon.