Chief Executive Jamie Clifford believes Kent Cricket will benefit in the long term from this year’s Twenty 20 campaign.

The Spitfires were effectively knocked out of this year’s tournament at home to the Essex Eagles on Friday night, but ended their ten games with a win against the Middlesex Panthers at Uxbridge on Sunday afternoon.

That victory saw the Spitfires finish fourth in the Southern Division and Clifford told KSN how he was disappointed the side hadn’t progressed to the Quarter Final stage, but there were positives to be taken from the past month:

“The team work hard at every form of the game, so I’m very disappointed for them as it’s not through lack of effort. Results haven’t gone for us.”

“Some good things have come out of it. The coaching team feel it’s been good to see some young players stand up and be counted, but ultimately it is disappointing as we have had a good record in T20 and we’re disappointed not to be progressing.”

“This year was not to be, but you can see in Twenty 20 over the years that it can be a fairly volatile competition and we were in a tough group, but we have got plenty of other cricket to focus on this year.”

Some fans have questioned why the club didn’t bring in a second overseas signing for the Twenty 20, but for Clifford it was a case of not wanting to:

“I look around the counties, see players arrive, players not arrive, players leave after a short period. I’ve said all along that we need to look at the situation sensibly to see what we could afford and then were only ten games in this group stage this year.”

“The prices we were being quoted for some players was silly really and so I think, and Jimmy has publicly that we’ve learnt an awful lot throughout this period about our players.”

“I don’t think you can look at it and say we should have had an overseas player. Yes success is important, but in one or two games we lost very narrowly. If the Essex result had gone our way at Chelmsford then things might have been different.”

“This group of players will have another year’s experience going into next year, so it will all go into the mix and we’ll look at it again next year.”

One of the better aspects of the Twenty 20 campaign was the amount of fans that came out for Kent’s home games and Clifford was hoping that those fans return to watch more cricket in the future:

“It was quite reassuring as you start to think is anybody interested in this anymore and you start to wonder whether your marketing messages are working, you start to doubt the whole thing really, but it shows what the sun can do.”

“It brings out the crowds and I think we had about 4,500 in for the Essex game and that re-enforces the message, that Friday nights, under floodlights at the height of the summer work and are popular.”

“I hope people will now come back though and see us for what remains for the rest of the season because there are still some very big days still to come.”

The next game for Kent is the visit of South Africa to Canterbury for a three day game beginning on Friday.

Unfortunately, their wicketkeeper Mark Boucher will miss the game and had retired from international cricket with immediate effect after sustaining an eye injury at Taunton on Monday.

Boucher was on 999 international dismissals for South Africa and will be sorely missed this week, but Kent fans will still get the chance to see some quality cricketers and Clifford told KSN how he was excited about the match:

“What a mouth watering prospect it will be, to see the number two side in the world shortly before they take on the number one side in the world on your doorstep.”

“Ticket sales for that are going really well and we are expecting a similar sort of crowd as we saw for the last T20 game, for the Friday and I’m hugely excited about the game.”

“It’s a real honour to have a Test side just before the start of a Test series and I hope people turn out in their numbers for it.”

“Tickets are just £10 to see South Africa and there are some stars in that side that might not play in Britain again like Jacques Kallis.”

Clifford was also keen to stress how once the South Africa game was finished, Kent fans still were in for some exciting days of cricket for the remainer of the summer:

“Once the South Africa game is out of the way, we switch out attention back to the Championship, we’re lying second at the moment and we really want to get promoted.”

“There is still a lot of hard work to do and we need the support for that remaining period. The CB40 is still wide open too, so there are still some big nights of cricket to come to Canterbury.”

Jamie Clifford also confirmed to KSN that Geraint Jones, Darren Stevens and James Tredwell had all been offered new deals by the club and was hopeful of agreeing terms with the trio in the near future.