Kent captain Sam Northeast says that hard work and players carrying out their individual ‘processes’ well have been the keys to his side’s County Championship success this season.

Unbeaten after five starts in the long-form format, Kent maintained their place in the automatic promotion berths with an emphatic 147-run win over Sussex last week.

Delighted by his unbeaten side’s fourth win of the campaign, Northeast said: “There’s not many times you go to Tunbridge Wells and get a positive result, you have to put in some seriously hard work if you’re to achieve that, and the guys did. It was a fantastic performance.

“Joe Denly played two outstanding knocks [119 and 71*] against a very good attack then we had Darren Stevens first-innings display with the ball [5-40]. Stevo put in some hard yards there and came up with a magnificent spell. It was all about hard graft, the whole team, but we managed to get over the win line.

“There’s a belief in our four-day side this season. We know the processes and we keep going through them. We’re hopeful of getting another overseas bowler in at some stage soon to bolster the attack and we’ll also look to monitor the pitches as we go deeper into the season and adapt our side to those pitches.”

Deserving of their week off from the latest round of games, Kent will re-charge the batteries and go again on Thursday, when they welcome basement side Durham to The Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence.

“Durham are a Division One side, on merit they would have stayed up last year, so we’ll have to be on our A Game again to get anything out of the match,” said Northeast. “But, we are playing some good cricket and we’ll be going into it full of confidence.

“It looks really tight at the top of the table at the moment and we’ll have to keep playing good cricket to keep winning, because we want to go up this year.

“We’ve played Sussex twice now and have beaten them twice, but I still think they’re a very good side. They will trouble a lot of sides going forward.”

Following the Martlets defeat to Kent in Tunbridge Wells, Luke Wright, the Sussex skipper, decided to stand down and hand over the reins to experienced opening batsman Chris Nash.

Announcing his decision in a club statement, Wells, for former England and IPL all-rounder, said: “I have always been someone that loves and enjoys the game but over a period of time now while being captain, this has not been the case and it has affected me both on and off the pitch.”