Kent’s defence of the One Day Cup reaches a vital stage this week as the Spitfires face Nottinghamshire and Essex at the Spitfire Ground St Lawrence with coach Simon Cook happy with recent performances.

The Spitfires go into this week knowing that two wins will send them a long way closer to being in the knockout stages of the competition. 

After wins over Surrey and Middlesex this last weekend, coach Simon Cook has told KSN that confidence is growing in the team, just as it did twelve months ago… 

“Winning creates momentum and is great for morale,” he said. “There’s confidence in the way that we’re playing and it’s been good that we’ve had a couple of people really stand up in the last few games – DBD, Jack (Leaning) in particular and it was good to see Compo (Ben Compton) getting some runs as it was Blakey (Alex Blake) against Surrey – there have been important contributions from Grant Stewart and the spinners have done a really good job and a job that we’ve set out to do through the middle of an innings.”

“It’s nice to get some momentum and that belief that you can win games.” 

With Leaning, Hami Qadri and Matt Parkinson all playing big parts in spinning Kent to their recent triumphs, we asked Cook if he could remember the last time, he’d seen a side spin more than half of their fifty overs?

Smiling he replied, “You’ll probably have to go back quite a long way, and remember we had one spinner (Jaydn Denly) who didn’t bowl against Middlesex.”

“We still had another ten overs of spin in the locker if we needed it! We’ve been fortunate in a way that we’ve come across a couple of pitches that had aided spin and again with the make-up of our side, we’ve pretty much got that covered with spin both into and away from the bat.”

“And then there’s a bit of mystery spin with Parky and that backed with some decent pace bowlers too can top and tail an innings.” 

“We do feel as though we’ve got most bases covered now on pretty much any pitch that we go to…” 

Daniel Bell-Drummond has returned in some style since his injury at the end of the Vitality Blast to make a couple of unexpected appearances following his “draft” to the London Spirit in The Hundred.

“It’s been a huge boost at the top of the order,” Cook admitted. “He’s a high-quality player and in particular in this form of cricket and white ball cricket, and he adds a lot of value with the runs that he scores as well as his contribution around the group is invaluable.”

“He’s unfortunate not to be playing for The Spirit, but we’re fortunate to have him potentially against Notts if he doesn’t get selected for their game on Friday as we know we’ll miss him on Sunday against Essex as The Spirit play the same day.”

Explaining Cook told us, “When there is a direct clash with a team in The Hundred, the players cannot play for their Counties on the same day, regardless of whether they’re in the Franchise eleven or not, so we’ll have to work out a way of replacing him against Essex which won’t be easy! Hopefully, he’ll be able to play on Thursday!” 

With two of the final three group games at Canterbury, Cook underlined his hope to make a Canterbury the fortress it was in the latter stages of last year’s competition.

“Now is the time to make Canterbury a Fortress that should take us a decent way to gaining qualification to the next phase.”

“And then as I said to you at the start of the tournament, it then becomes one match at a time, and you put your best foot forward.”

“We know how to play at Canterbury; we’ve got good memories from good performances here last year, and in the T20s, we made St Lawrence our fortress.”

“Last season in this Cup we had great wins against Yorkshire and Lancashire – both were crucial to getting us through.” 

The top three from each of the two groups qualify for the knockout phase with the group winners progressing straight to a home semi-final – going into these two home games, the Spitfires find themselves fourth in Group A level on six points with Yorkshire and two behind Hampshire in second, with Leicestershire on ten having played a game more! 

Picture supplied by Kent Cricket.