Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Too little too late, admits Walker
Sep 25 Glamorgan (Canterbury) ....CC Key: Matt Walker admits Kent will end up ‘kicking themselves’ over their failure to make the Natwest T20 Blast knock-out stages, writes Mark Stokes Wins over Somerset and Essex meant the Spitfires would have reached the last eight if they had beaten Surrey in their final South Group match at Canterbury on Friday. However, a 10-run defeat sent the visitors through at the home side’s expense and Walker admitted it was a missed opportunity. Walker, whose team eventually finished sixth, said: “We had to win our last three games, that was the target and we got ourselves into a position whereby we could qualify. “It was in our hands which was the first objective and at halfway (against Surrey) I thought we were well in the game but it probably summed up our performance (in the competition), not being able to get over the line in a tight game. It’s happened to us in a few games this campaign. “We’ll be kicking ourselves, we’ve had opportunities in this campaign to get through and even in this game we had a good opportunity. “Overall though, we probably haven’t quite deserved it. We fought hard at the back end of the campaign but it was all a bit too late.” Walker said there were a host of positives to come out of the campaign – including the outstanding form of opener Joe Denly, the emergence of seamer Calum Haggett and the strides made by left-arm spinner Imran Qayyum. However, he conceded that Kent had not played well enough as a team on a consistent basis. He added: “T20 can set it up like that, you have individual brilliance along the way and you hope then that everyone else just plays their part. “It’s been a bit the tale of the tape really – we’ve had lots of brilliant individual performances but never quite put a team performance in.” “You can rely on a couple to an extent in T20 that will sometimes get you through if they are outstanding performances but you’ve got to be better throughout the group and in games like this, low-scoring games, you need people to contribute from top to bottom. “We weren’t a million miles away in the end, so it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s annoying and frustrating because you want to go on to further stages and put yourself into finals day and then you never know. “If you’re going to win anything you’ve got to be consistent. You’ve got to play better more often than the opposition and we haven’t.”