Buoyed by their best start to a championship season since 1936 Kent Spitfires replace the red ball with the white variety on Thursday when they welcome Hampshire for the start of this year’s Royal London One Day Cup campaign.

With three successive wins behind them in the four-day format, Spitfires are likely to make subtle changes to their side for the start of the 50-over competition which this year will be played out over a three-week block of qualifying games.

Looking ahead to the match, Spitfires’ head coach Matt Walker said his side can justifiably go into the clash full of confidence after their unbeaten start to the summer. He said: “Over the close season we looked at ways to improve our resilience and ruthlessness and I feel we’ve achieved that so far.

“In a couple of our games we’ve found ourselves up against it, but somewhere, somehow, people stood up and were counted. The match winning performances have also come from a few different sources, which has been very pleasing to see.

“When we get a stranglehold on a game, especially with the ball, we tend to not let go and that is the thing that has impressed me the most this year. On the field, we’ve been a far tougher and ruthless bunch.

“We face a different format now, but we had a great month out in Antigua during pre-season playing some really competitive white-ball cricket over there, so we’re quite relaxed going into this first game with Hampshire.

“Inside the last couple of days it’s been a case of quickly switching the mindset, but we’ve been really decent in this format in the past few years, getting to the knock-out stages last year. But we’ll talk about areas where I believe we can improve and once we’re over the ropes I think we’ll see what a confident and talented set of guys we have in the squad right now.”

Indeed, Walker has enjoyed an embarrassment of pace-bowling riches so far this season, to the extent that he was able to rest Mitch Claydon – the country’s fourth leading bowler at that point – for this week’s three-day win over Derbyshire.

“It was simply a gut feeling to leave Mitch out,” explained Walker. “It was a tough decision, don’t get me wrong. He’d taken 15 wickets costing 18 apiece so, looking from the outside in, it probably appeared a crazy choice to make. But the other bowlers have also been impressive, so it was just a gut feel and the best team to go into that match on that pitch.

“It’s tough for the player to take of course, but it just shows the strength of our side right now. Make no bones about it either, Mitch still has a big part to play this season, especially in the white ball games, when he has the tendency to come into his own.

“I think we have a first division attack and we’ve shown signs already this season that we can take 20 wickets against decent batting line-ups and on any given day. It has been a team effort by the bowling unit, the pressure is built up at one end and the wickets follow down the other. Mitch has played a big part in that.”

Hampshire, who play their championship cricket in the top flight, have made a reasonable start to the season and remain unbeaten after three matches after securing one win and a brace of draws. They will be keen, however, to avenge last season’s RLODC defeat to Kent on their home turf at the Ageas Bowl.

On that day, July 26, a double century opening stand between Joe Denly and Daniel Bell-Drummond helped Spitfires to comfortably chase down Hampshire’s 230 all out to win with more than six overs to spare.

Matt Coles, who had played for Hampshire the previous summer, returned to prove their nemesis with the ball by taking competition-best figures of six for 56.

While Kent went on to qualify for last year’s quarter finals, Hampshire – with only four wins from their eight, south group starts – missed out. It is a record they will be looking to improve upon in 2017.