Head coach James Hockley reckons Kent Women’s close-season pro-activeness helped them with player recruitment.
The Horses have added plenty of new faces to their squad ahead of this summer, including former Surrey skipper Amy Gordon and last term’s Essex player-of-the-year Matilda Callaghan.
Hockley will lead their playing group alongside captain Megan Belt, going into their first season as a Tier 2 team.
Asked if he had been surprised at the calibre of player they had attracted, Hockley said: “Not really.
“Because Kent is the most successful county in women’s cricket, I think that has its draw.
“Because we were proactive, a lot of the counties hadn’t sorted out their own systems yet. Seeing down the line what we wanted, I think we earmarked a few players to come our way.
“They knew the kind of players we had and they knew the coaches so, hopefully, it was an easy decision for them to make.
“It’s given them an understanding of what we want to achieve as a club – and they bought it – so all we have to do now is go out there and do it.”
Hockley would love for the Horses to win silverware this term, although knows it may take time for their new squad to properly flourish.
He said: “It goes without saying that we would love to win something. We do this to win, but I think we have to appreciate that we’re so early in our development.
“It’s going to take a bit of time to see where we are because we’ve not been on the pitch together as a group. Until that happens and we start to find our way, it might take a bit of time to work out our playing group.
“But we would like to win something because we have got such an ambition to be a Tier 1 county at some point.
“If we want to be a Tier 1 county, we need to be stepping up to the top of the Tier 2 table.”
Hockley and Geraint Jones – another former Kent men’s player – will be in charge of the women’s side, which helped their squad to get used to playing at Canterbury’s Spitfire Ground more regularly.
“It’s an amazing experience,” said Hockley. “It’s such an honour to play here and it’s a different experience to what they’re used to.
“Having that partisan Kent crowd cheering them on, that’s going to be amazing.
“Hopefully, the Kent Women supporters will be as mean [to opposing teams] as the Kent men’s supporters are!”
Now 45, Hockley, who played more than 100 times for Kent between 1998 and 2010, admits he would have faced new head coach Adam Hollioake when he was Surrey skipper.
He confirmed: “We did a long time ago. You probably sledged me – it sounds like you sledged most people!
“Adam is an unbelievable character and a big competitor so I’m sure we would have had some good games against Surrey back in the day.”
