Chief Executive Jamie Clifford has told KSN it’s the Kent fans he feels sorry for in a week that’s cost the club around fifty thousand pounds.

An horrendous week weather wise was capped off with the first Friend’s Life Twenty 20 game against the Sussex Sharks being abandoned without a ball being bowled on Tuesday night.

Originally scheduled to take place at the Nevill Ground in Tunbridge Wells, it was switched to the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury with just over 24 hours to prepare for the game, but despite heroic efforts from the groundstaff, it was called off shortly before the scheduled start time of 7pm when it was apparent that the pitch was unplayable.

The cancellation of the game topped off a week that has seen Kent play only about 20% of the cricket they should have done and saw the lucrative Tunbridge Wells Festival week decimated by the weather.

For Clifford, despite causing him no end of headaches, it’s the club’s patriotic supporters he feels sorry for:

“It’s very disappointing to call this last game off. When you make a decision to move a game, you don’t do it lightly because there is a lot to do to set up a game in twenty four hours, not just in terms of pitch preparation, but also getting everything else about the infrastructure right.”

“We had all the stewarding arrangements to sort along with the rest of it, so my team have worked really hard to get a game on and having had high hopes of playing, the weather forecast was better and we thought by moving the game to Canterbury everything would be fine.”

“It started drizzling early in the morning and then went on to rain for most of the day. The forecast then said it would clear up about 4 o’clock and it did stop for a little while, but we were really fighting a losing battle as there was just so much water on the ground.”

“I feel just so desperately sorry for everybody and it doesn’t get any easier as we’ve had to send home a crowd disappointed at not having seen any cricket. We’ve done what we can and we’ve offered full refunds. It’s very difficult for everybody concerned and the players are all disappointed too.”

“It’s quite hard as they aren’t doing what they are paid to do.”

The first three days of the County Championship game against Hampshire at Tunbridge Wells was rain affected, costing the club dearly, whilst the Clydesdale Bank 40 game against Northamptonshire on Sunday was called off with Kent just starting their innings and Clifford was disappointed that the trip to the West of the county will be remembered for all the wrong reasons:

“It was the 100th Festival week and in years to come people will have something to write about. Whoever worked out it was the 100th Festival is to blame as far as I’m concerned, as from then on it was destined to be a washout.”

“It’s been a pretty unremarkable way to celebrate a 100th Festival week in terms of cricket, but quite remarkable in respect to the amount of rain we’ve had over the past week.”

“Anyone that’s seen the pictures of Tunbridge Wells will know there’s not a lot else we could do and in the end you have to accept your fate. The weather does what it does and it’s part of our season, part of our game and we have to work around it.”

“Hopefully, the sun will shine and we’ve got lots of big games still to come, we’ve got a County Championship campaign that will build to a crescendo and should hopefully end with a push for promotion. We’ve got the South Africans here which is a bonus for us, we’ve got floodlits game, so there’s plenty more to look forward to and we need to make sure they’re as big events as we make them.”

Some fans will have been critical for having turned up at the ground on Tuesday night to find out the game was called off shortly before 7pm, but Clifford insists his team had been doing all they could to get the game on:

“You cover and sheet the pitch, but what was going on at the square was one thing, but actually the outfield was saturated as well. We were doing everything we could to get a game on and in the end the umpires have to make a decision as to whether the game goes ahead or not and in their view, and it was a view shared by both captains, that no matter what we did, we weren’t going to get a game on.”

“I’ve worked in cricket for thirteen years and I’ve known bad periods and odd days that it’s bad, like the India game last year where it rained so hard in such a short space of time, but we got a game on because the period leading into it had been incredibly dry and the water disappeared, but I’ve never known where day after day, after day, it’s been rain, more rain and then more rain.”

“It’s been constant too and when it rains for about twelve hours it does lots of damage and the rain at Tunbridge Wells, the groundsman told me we’d had three inches of rain from Sunday evening when we left to Monday mid-morning.”

“The covers are designed to keep water off the pitch, but when you have that amount of water it sits both above and below the covers and at that point it becomes impossible.”

The loss of so much cricket has to be put in financial terms and a figure of £50,000 has been estimated at the amount Kent will lose for having played so little cricket over the Tunbridge Wells week.

For Clifford, that kind of loss is hard to take and means his team will now have to work even harder to make this season a financial success:

“That figure was a back of a fag packet calculation we did on Saturday when we were sitting wondering if we were going to come out, but I don’t think it’s going to be far from that in terms of a hole in our budget.”

“The challenge for us is where do you claw that back. Those days of cricket are gone, there’s only one Festival Week in Tunbridge Wells and that’s normally a bumper week.”

“We insure games, but you can’t insure every game of the season so we insured floodlit games, the South Africa game and Canterbury Week, but you have to draw the line somewhere otherwise you’d be paying more in insurance than you’d ever be likely to claim.”

“We drew the line where we thought was sensible and in the end last week turned out to be a washout and that’s sometimes the risk you’ve got to take. Luckily, this last game was insured and was actually insured against the potential of moving venue, so before we even got to Canterbury we knew we were going to get an insurance payout, but I come back to what I always say, we’re a Cricket Club, we’re here to play cricket matches and not to collect insurance payouts and that’s very very frustrating.”

“There is a hole now in our budgets and everybody’s going to have to work bloody hard to make sure we close it.”

Kent will now be hoping their next fixture against the Surrey Lions in the Twenty 20 at Beckenham goes ahead on Sunday afternoon with a crowd of 5,000 – 6,000 expected to turnout for the local clash.

To book your tickets, visit www.kentcricket.co.uk