Matt Walker admits Kent will end up ‘kicking themselves’ over their failure to make the NatWest T20 Blast knock-out stages.

Successive 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 Londoners through at the home side’s expense and Walker admitted it was a missed opportunity.

Walker, whose team eventually finished sixth in the group, 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 that’s fair to say, we’ve had opportunities in this campaign to get through this competition and even in this game we had a good opportunity.

“Overall though we probably haven’t quite deserved to get through. We fought hard at the back end of the campaign but it was all a bit too late really.”

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.

“I think 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.”