Simon Cook felt Kent’s T20 Blast display was the most disappointing aspect of their 2024 season.
Director of cricket Cook suggested their County Championship Division 1 relegation wasn’t a real surprise after only just avoiding the drop in the two previous seasons.
But he pointed to Kent Spitfires’ Blast campaign – where they came bottom of the South group with just four wins from 14 games – as his real frustration.
Cook said: “I actually said at a members’ forum that, for a club of this size, it’s very difficult to compete across all three formats at the level we want to, just through the resources of players that we’ve got available.
“It was always going to be a challenge. Is it (County Championship relegation) a surprise? It probably isn’t if we’re honest.
“We struggled to stay up last year, we struggled to stay up the year before, and we had similar T20 results. I think, for me, the Championship cricket is disappointing but not unexpected.
“My frustration, really, is around the T20s. Going into this year, you look at the T20 squad and go ‘Actually, we have got a pretty good chance of making the quarter-finals’ and that’s, essentially, where you set up to get to each year.
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“You set up to get to the quarter-finals. Then, it’s a one-game shoot-out and T20 can be a bit of a toss of a coin.
“We had a good enough team to get through to the quarter-finals this year – as we did last year – and that’s the thing which is most disappointing.
“That’s a format where we should have been able to compete.”
Kent didn’t fare much better in the One-Day Cup, either, as Mark Dekker stepped up to take interim charge of the side.
They came third-bottom in Group A with three wins from eight 50-over games.
Cook, 47, said: “I sat down with Mark Dekker the other day and just said ‘You were short of a quality batter in Joe Denly.’ He was due to come in midway through that tournament and it didn’t really happen.
“Bizarrely, that’s actually happened three years in a row! He was a big miss in that middle order and that was reflected in the T20s, as well. It kind of unbalanced the side a little bit.
“Essentially, we had too few batters and too many bowlers. He’s learning and that’s what that competition is all about – it’s not just about players learning – it’s also about coaches stepping up, like Mark from second-team coach into a full head coach position.
“Jack Leaning took full charge, as well. So, it’s about understanding those team dynamics and how the team sets up for that particular time.
“He probably didn’t get it quite right but that’s the learning and that’s what it’s all about. Now, you move forward.”
Cook was Kent’s One-Day Cup interim head coach when they won the competition in 2022, prior to stepping up to become director of cricket. So, he knows as well as anyone it can take time before a team begins to flourish.
“The first year that I did it, we didn’t have a particularly good year,” he recalled. “But like I said to the players at the time, we’re building positions here, identifying roles and then, the following year, we could really start to build on that because they’d had a year of playing cricket (in that format).
“Nathan Gilchrist hadn’t really played much white-ball cricket in that period, Grant Stewart wasn’t bowling that much, and we had Matt Milnes for a bit before he was called-up to The Hundred.
“But fast forward 12 months, they were in a much better position and then we started to get some good performances. That’s how I kind of see that evolution in the One-Day Cup.
“I’m looking forward to potentially seeing (wicketkeeper-batsman) Ben Dawkins play in that, given his white-ball form for England under-19s, and people like Ekansh Singh.
“There’s other examples of giving Jaydn Denly a go and phasing him in. I would like to see him playing more cricket in that white-ball format.
“There’s some nice, exciting green shoots to see, and we’ll continue to build on that.”
