The 2025 County Championship begins today as Kent begin their Division Two fixtures at Wantage Road, Northampton with Director of Cricket, Simon Cook, keen to see his side promoted back to the top tier.

As the Adam Hollioake reign begins, KSN spoke with Director of Cricket, Simon Cook, about the disappointments of relegation from cricket’s “top table” last summer and the hopes for the new campaign.  

“It was an exceptionally challenging year last year,” Cook admitted, “But there was a lot going on off-field too in terms of assessing our pathway as well as getting to grips what our “player-flow” has been like over the past few years and that was probably the most challenging in the volume of work that had to go in adjusting what happens within our pathway, compounded by the results on the field!” 

“We were unlucky with three of our front-line bowlers going down injured pretty early on and not actually contributing anything through the season.”

“There were the usual issues with overseas players and availability, non-availability, injuries, along with the comings in and comings out.” 

“All-in-all my first year in the job was a challenge definitely! Having the cricket in there too and having the Tier One bids (for the women) to put together and putting the whole set up in place for the women was a challenge in itself.”

“We were affected by what was going on around The Hundred, you have developments going on at Beckenham as well and what we are going to do with Beckenham.”

“There were backdrops of three or four really big projects going through last summer of which a couple of them were once in a generation projects – it was a significantly challenging year, and if I am honest, it won’t be any less challenging this year!” 

Kent’s relegation saw the county drop into Division Two and Cook admitted, “Definitely you could say that the game caught up with us. I put together a review for the board at the end of last year which highlighted the decline in our performances in Championship cricket, in particular over the last five years, and we kind of just hung on in Division One for the last few years and ultimately the stats will say that this was coming.”

“As much as we believe in the players, and the players have got lots of potential and talent, it was clear that that was the trend!” 

“What it does though, now that we are in Division Two, it gives you an opportunity to breathe a little bit and regather and then hopefully move forward, whereas in previous years, there was no time to breathe as we were walking and starting every season, obviously saying that you want to win it, but ultimately in the back of everyone’s mind I think was “are we going to stay up this year?”

“Now we are in Division Two there is a very different feeling and there is a genuine feeling that we can win the division, we can have success, and we can drive things forward!” 

“It gives you that bit of building space to really start to build a sustainable future.” 

Reflecting on the departure of Matt Walker at the end of 2024, Cook told us.

“He has given everything to this Club as a player, as a coach in whatever role or capacity that he has had. He went through a massive rollercoaster ride through coming back to the Club, winning T20 as a player and then coming back to the Club and winning it as a head coach, and then there was that decline over the past few years for a person, a coach and who has had Kent cricket at his heart for so long, it really was getting just too much and you could see that with him.”

“Any time you lose a coach who is so invested in the welfare is tough to take because we are not going to get the same person come back in. It was tricky but as Matt said himself, it was probably the right time!” 

And so, to 2025 and the arrival of Adam Hollioake. “Adam is, from the outside, completely different to Matt. Using the old adage that if you keep doing the same thing, you’ll get the same results, so, we took the decision that now is the time to do something different and look at it in a different way with a different outlook, approach things in a different way because we do have an extremely talented group of players and maybe Adam can unlock something that hasn’t been able to be tapped into in the past.”

“That was the reason behind going with him – he has success written right the way through his DNA.” 

“Potentially one of the problems Adam may face is expectancy; expectancy that we will bounce back straight away because we have been in the top flight for so long, we will bounce straight back!”

“We can’t just expect that we will go back up – Division Two cricket will not be a straight forward ride; it’s a lot of street fighting; turning up to pitches that are not necessarily contusive to what you wat to play on, and you really have to fight long and hard to get enough points to get up.”

“That’s ultimately the way you must go into the season knowing that you have to scrap for every single point!” 

Picture supplied by Kent Cricket.