Kent Spitfires may have played themselves back into contention for the knockout stages of the Vitality Blast with four successive wins, but coach Matt Walker admits his side still have a lot to do.
Speaking ahead of Tuesday night’s win against Sussex in Hove, Walker admitted his side needed to keep winning to stand a chance of progressing to the Quarter Final stage.
“It had to happen (winning four in a row) after the loss to Essex if we are serious about getting into the knockout stages,” Walker told us.
“Winning breeds confidence and make no mistake, we’ve still got a lot to do, and the last three games have been really important to us, and you can see people really starting to believe in what we’re doing!”
“I suppose in some ways the belief has been there since the start of the season and even when the results haven’t gone our way – bar the Glamorgan game – there has been a lot to be positivity about, it’s not as if we played poorly, but we just haven’t got over the line.”
“We had a discussion after the Hampshire home game to talk about a few things that we could do better. We got that win against Hampshire playing a good all-round game – they got ahead of us early on, but we pulled it back and got into a position that we could chase down the score.”
“And the way that we did gave us belief going to Middlesex and Gloucester… We were outstanding at Lord’s and the confidence that the batters showed has been there all season without really going on and getting a “score” – DBD (Daniel Bell-Drummond) did against Hampshire and then Joe (Denly) did at Lord’s.”
“Middlesex was always going to be close with the short boundaries, but we got the win. I thought Fred Klaassen’s 18th over was outstanding, Kane (Richardson) came back well to get late wickets and George’s (Linde) final over was brilliant!”
“And then the overnight trip to Bristol – not a place we’ve won at since 2016 was very different to the night before at Lord’s! A tricky dry outfield and two paced wicket as we have come to expect down there.”
“Jack Leaning was outstanding with the ball – four overs for sixteen – and where we’ve stumbled in the past chasing the smaller totals, we needed someone to stay there, and Daniel did just that for us on Saturday and we got through to the win and now we go into this week knowing that we’ve got to keep going.”
“Two games in two days against different opposition isn’t easy but I’m not going to have a rant about scheduling, but everyone is in the same boat – Gloucester played on Sunday after playing us on Saturday for example.”
“It’s been this way for as long as I can remember. It is the same this week – Sussex on Tuesday then back-to-back games on Thursday and Friday with Essex and Middlesex before four days at Northampton from Sunday.”
“We always knew June was going to be a test with the amount of cricket – it’s not a surprise anymore as people have done it before; it’s not easy and it’s a big ask for all the players, and there are times that it does ask too much of the players and all of the staff.”
“There’s no easy answer… When you’re winning a few games, it really does make things easier and let’s hope it continues.”
“It doesn’t matter who we’re facing at this stage of the competition, they’re all big games. People are beating each other as it happens all the time and I’m sure that there will be more twists and turns before the end of the group stage.”
“All we can do is to take care of our own business and keep winning games and putting pressure on others. We’ve got five games to go, and we’ve got to set ourselves a target of winning four out of those five games.”
“Hitting a bit of form in the back end of the group stages can work in your favour going into the latter stages getting into that momentum. We know that we’ve got to win pretty much every game – it’s a very simple equation.”
“If we can get right in amongst it for those games, you really don’t know what will be possible!”
Kent went into the first of this week’s three games with Wes Agar coming in for Kane Richardson in the only change to the squad that won at Bristol.
Picture supplied by Max Flego Photography.