Australian bowler Wes Agar is to return to Kent in 2024 as one of their overseas players, head coach Matt Walker has revealed.

Agar, younger brother of Australian international Test spinner Ashton Agar, played for Kent this summer. He initially was due to stay for four County Championship Division 1 clashes - but finished up committing until the end of July.

Walker, whose team secured Division 1 survival after a nerve-jangling final day of the summer thanks, in part to a draw against Lancashire, said: “Hopefully, we’ll try and get some quality overseases.

“We have signed Wes Agar already so he’s back for the start of the season.

“But it’s going to be tricky. With the IPL [Indian Premier League] and the World Cup, there’s going to be a very small pool of players that you’re going to get for any length of time. So we’re going to have to be pretty smart around what we get.

“This will be the core group. But we’ll work really hard.

“The boys have got a winter to work on what they want to do, what they need to do to improve, going and playing cricket around the world.

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“This is an exciting bunch of cricketers we have got here. That’s the bottom line.

“We know there’s talent. It’s a bit raw in some cases but they’re only going to get better and they’ll get better playing against the best players.

“Hopefully, the lessons learnt this year don’t go to waste and they have digested them, understood them, and worked out how they’ll get better.

“But there’s no lack of talent.”

Right-arm bowler Agar, 26, claimed a five-wicket haul away to Northamptonshire in one of just two red-ball wins this year - playing through the pain to do so.

“He’s an absolutely great man to have around,” Walker added. “He really put in some great contributions.

“When you sign an overseas player, you want the quality and you want the performances - but you also want the bloke. You couldn’t have a better bloke than Wes.

“When we were talking about it, speaking to a few of the players, it became a no-brainer because they all want him back and we want him back. He wants to come back.

“When you hire someone from overseas, you never quite know until they walk through the door and go out on the pitch. But he was a whole-hearted performer.

“I look back at that Northants game where he played with a bit of an injury. That sort of ended his season, really.

“But his effort through that period was extraordinary.”

It proved another challenging red-ball campaign for Kent albeit, again, they did enough in the season run-in to avoid relegation.

Walker thinks Kent should be proud of their eighth-placed finish, considering what they have at their disposal compared to their rivals.

“This division is a very good division,” he admitted. “I think it’s the best it’s been, actually.

“The strong sides have become a lot stronger. You come into the season with all sorts of hopes and expectations - and wanting to win the Championship - but realistically, that’s become harder and harder for sides like us to do.

“We’ve finished the eighth-best side in the country which is a pretty good achievement for a side like us. We would have liked to have been higher, of course we would, and we’d have liked to have played better.

“We’ve had our issues, I don’t need to go into that now, and that’s cricket.

“Everyone has to deal with those sorts of things. We know we can play better.

“We know, for a lot of this season, we have let situations slip. We haven’t taken 20 wickets consistently which, if you want to win games of cricket, you absolutely need to do. We haven’t had that.

“That’s down to a lot of injuries but we haven’t batted well enough. But there’s also some positives in the emergence of Tawanda [Muyeye] and Finchy [Harry Finch].

“We gave Surrey a great run for their money in both games. Certainly one of those games, we look back on and think ‘We should have won that game’ but this is the strength of the division.

“There’s some really good sides.”

Kent’s end-of-season awards evening will be at Canterbury’s Spitfire Ground on Wednesday.