SPITFIRES’ skipper Matthew Fleming says his side must buck up their ideas and concentration levels if they are to stand any chance of finishing in the Norwich Union League prize money this season.

Despite landing a five-wicket away win over struggling Durham Dynamos in a shortened game in Chester-le-Street, Fleming believes his side have yet to put in a fully convincing performance in their 10 Division 1 starts to date.

"It’s still got to get much better than that," said the limited overs’ captain afterwards. "A five-wicket win is a comfortable win but a seven wicket win would have been far better.

"There were one or two similarities there at the end to the run chase that went wrong at Taunton. We exorcised a few of the ghosts, but there are still a couple that haunt us."

With three wickets apiece from Mark Ealham and James Golding, Kent restricted the Dynamos to 153 for eight, but then lost five wickets themselves in polishing the job off.

Fleminmg stressed: "I’m disappointed that we lost late wickets because it affects your run-rate and things like that. That may sound boring, but run-rate may well effect whether we come first or second in this because I still don’t believe we are quite out of the race yet.

"We bowled well, but we made sloppy errors in the field and they ran well between the wickets, but I’d have taken 153 had you offered that before the game. We made a slight mess of the batting and it didn’t help that I got hit flush on the shoulder by Steve Harmison and could hardly hold the bat after that.

"We had them down and out at 51 without loss but I couldn’t keep two hands on the bat, so I kept swinging and got out. After that we lost four more wickets when there was no real need, but overall it’s not been a bad week in the league for us as we’ve won twice and widened the game between those in the bottom three and ourselves."