Sam Northeast admitted Kent's inability to win consistently at home was the main reason for their failure to qualify for the NatWest T20 Blast quarter-finals.

Four of their six victories in the South Group came outside of the county and they won only two of their seven scheduled home games - the opener against Essex at Beckenham and the rain-affected game with Somerset at Canterbury.

Friday's 10-run defeat to Surrey at the Spitfire Ground St Lawrence was their fifth in six games there and saw the visitors qualify for the last eight at Kent's expense.

The Spitfires finished in sixth and a disappointed Northeast admitted that he didn't feel the wickets prepared at HQ necessarily allowed them to play to their strengths.

He added: "I think our home record has been really poor, we’ve only won one out of six (at Canterbury) and that’s what has cost us, coming here and not having home advantage, not getting the pitches we’re asking for that's the disappointing thing.

"I don’t know, I'm not a groundsman, but I’m not sure the surface out there allows Simon (groundsman Simon Williamson) to do much with it so we'll have to really have a think.

"We tried to play a lot more in the middle of the square because that's where we think the best pitches are but it doesn't happen like that.

"We go away and play on good wickets which seem to suit our batters really well, here it doesn't, limping towards (totals of) 150, 160 consistently we’ve not really got off to flyers.

"We’ll have to have a chat with Si and hopefully produce a few better wickets going forward."

Northeast admitted that before the competition Kent had been confident of qualifying for the knock-out stages but conceded that they had not played well enough, often enough.

He cited the Surrey defeat as a case in point. Kent were 78-1 chasing 155 to win and closed on 144-8.

He said: "Before the competition we would have thought the quarter finals were a very realistic goal and we'd be disappointed if we didn't get there and absolutely we are disappointed right now.

"We don’t think we lived up to the potential of our team, yes there are a lot of good teams around, people have recruited really well but we still felt we should have qualified from this group.

"It came down to the last game and the batters will have been disapppointed not to have got us over the line."

Northeast admitted Jason Roy's innings of 78 was decisive on Friday but Kent had still felt confident of chasing their target.

He added: "I think as a batting unit we felt we could have chased that down but again we’ve come up a bit short.

"In the last two games (against Somerset and Essex) we’ve played really good cricket coming into this and we gave ourselves a chance (to qualify).

"You always look back and think what games we could have won etc but the reality of it is that we weren’t good enough for large parts in this competition and we found ourselves short.

"We’ll have to have a think going forward about how we go about things and how we approach next year but that’s a long way off.

"The immediate thought is that we’re disappointed but we’ve got a lot to play for in terms of championship cricket coming up."

Kent are fifth in Specsavers County Championship Division 2 and resume their campaign against Leicestershire at Canterbury. The game starts on Bank Holiday Monday, August 28.