Head coach Adam Hollioake insists Kent still can have one of their best-ever seasons.
Spitfires will return to action after a 12-day break when they start a latest One-Day Cup campaign as they play Northamptonshire Steelbacks in Canterbury tomorrow, having failed to qualify for the Vitality T20 Blast knockout stages.
But Kent remain in the County Championship Division 2 promotion hunt and hopes are high they can do well in the 50-over competition, as well.
They used the One-Day Cup as a chance to blood several youngsters, including Jaydn Denly, Ben Dawkins, Ekansh Singh, Corey Flintoff and Olly Curtiss, last year, although the main goal remains clear for Hollioake.
He said: “We’re trying to win it, mate.
“The way I look at it, we’re out of the T20s now, and there is no point crying over spilt milk.
“If we were to win Division 2 or get promotion, we’d be happy with that and, if we were to add the One-Day Cup to that, I think it would be one of Kent’s most successful seasons. We have got to look at that.
“We have to pick ourselves up after this disappointment and look at those two things.”
With the One-Day Cup schedule clashing with The Hundred competition again, many county clubs will have to do without some of their bigger-name players.
But Spitfires skipper Sam Billings (Trent Rockets), England international Zak Crawley (Sunrisers Leeds) and batsman Tawanda Muyeye (Manchester Super Giants) are the sole Kent men that will turn out in The Hundred, meaning all other fit players should be available.
“I don’t care what anyone else is doing,” said Hollioake, who was an England One-Day International captain in the 1990s. “If I play you at table tennis, mate, I’m trying to win – although I haven’t seen what your table tennis is like! But I’ll try and win.
“You can guarantee, if there is a professional game of cricket going on, I will be trying to win it. The players feel the same way.
“If they put us in the Tiddlywinks League next year, we’d be trying to win that, too. I have never understood people asking ‘Are you trying to win it?’.
“We’re trying to win every competition we enter.”
Denly, 20, and 19-year-old fellow all-rounder Singh are still among those expected to be handed more first-team chances in the One-Day Cup.
With Spitfires unable to qualify for the knockout stages of the Blast, they came into the team and each collected maiden T20 wickets in a campaign-ending 14-run defeat to Middlesex in Canterbury.
Hollioake said: “They both got wickets, which is great.
“They both bowled at difficult times and that’s character-building. Every time a young player plays, they’re just getting more experience.
“Jaydn said to me, when he got the ball in his hands, he had never been more nervous – and that’s good. It’s exposure therapy. They’re getting exposed to these things.
“The next time he comes out to play a game, maybe, he won’t be quite as nervous and he’ll be more used to it.
“That’s what these games are for. It’s a dead-rubber in the sense that we couldn’t qualify but we still wanted to win the game.
“Those nerves are still there because the pressure is still on us to try and win.”
Two days after hosting Northamptonshire, Kent will take on Gloucestershire in Bristol.
They will then face Lancashire in a first match at the county’s new ‘second home’ of Farington on Tuesday.
Kent were 99-run victors in a warm-up match at Norfolk yesterday.
Chris Benjamin top scored with 121 in the visitors’ 284 all out before Denly (3-40) turned the screw.
