After their “bye” week, Kent return to County Championship action this week as Hampshire come to Canterbury for a four-day game with Matt Walker wanting more from his side.

Kent go into the game having slipped to the foot of Division One with only six points covering the bottom half of the table after four games.

Coach Matt Walker told KSN this week that sessions in the nets and under the Canterbury lights ahead of the next two Championship games and the start of the Vitality Blast have his squad in a good place going into this weekend.

“The week has probably come at just the right time for us, “Walker admitted. “We’ve had time to refuel a little bit having a bit of time away to think about things. We’ve got some white ball practice in and hopefully it’ll serve us in good stead and allow us to hit the ground in a fresh way and I think that everyone is looking forward to this week, and these next two games against two very good sides – a good mini block for us to really get our teeth into!”

“We’ve practiced well over the last couple of days, and everyone is in good place.”

The weather forecast for the four days again sadly isn’t great – a point that has plagued the county games so far as Walker conceded.

“It is dragging itself out a bit this weather,” the coach shrugged. “It’s played a part in most games so far and I think the forecast is “changeable” if that’s the way to put it, but we can’t worry too much about it.”

“We have to focus on the first day of the game and see where it takes us as after that we can adapt! But it’s ironic that we’ve had a lovely couple of days whilst we’ve been off – was nice to train under the sun on Wednesday but the next two days don’t look too good.”

“But it is the same for both sides and so we won’t be using that as an excuse – everyone will love to play under blazing sunshine for four days and hopefully that will come,” grinning Walker added, “maybe Kane (Richardson) is bringing it in his suitcase this weekend!”

Visitors Hampshire come to Canterbury on the back of a big defeat to Warwickshire being bowled out for ninety-seven despite a half century from skipper James Vince.

Walker though is wary to draw any comparisons to his side’s big defeat against the Bears – he said, “it’s two different games! We can compare if we want to, but this is a new game. Read whatever you want into it, but we’ve been in that position ourselves.”

“It may give Hampshire a kick up the back side, but it might also put the batters questioning their state of confidence. We know how good Warwickshire are as we weren’t good enough and they then showed their quality last week by skittling Hampshire twice.”

“It’s a new game on a new pitch and I’m sure that they will be up for the challenge as they’re a very good side. We go into the game knowing what we have to do and with respect on what they’re about, this is all about us this week and we got back to basics and back to doing the simple things over and over again which will hopefully stand us in good stead.”

George Linde and Tawanda Muyeye are named in the Kent thirteen with Walker confirming that Muyeye will play and bat at three in place of Daniel Bell-Drummond.

“It’s pretty obvious that we’ve been short of runs and Tawanda will come in and play, but George probably won’t as we’re likely to stay with just one spinner. We did think about two, but it’s rare that we do especially at Canterbury… so we’ll stick with one spinner and four seamers.”

“Tawanda will come in for DBD which in one way is a tough call on DBD – he’s not the only one not scoring runs, but Tawanda has knocked the door down in the seconds effectively scoring five hundreds – three hundreds in a row and a ninety-seven and a ninety-five not out – he’s in great form and when you do that in the second team and people in the first team aren’t producing and you’re losing games of cricket, we had to think about a change. So, it’s a straight swap.”

“Sam Billings will bat at five and Jordan Cox is going to take the gloves – so there are a couple of little changes that we think will help and hopefully Tawanda will continue his terrific form.”

“We ask the players in the second team to produce performances as we know what a talented bunch they are and Tawanda has done that in spades…”

Picture supplied by Max Flego Photography.