Incoming Kent director of cricket Simon Cook has hinted their squad size may have been too small this summer - and it could be something he’ll address over the winter.

Kent have been left fighting to stay in County Championship Division 1 for the second successive season.

Just before their unsuccessful One-Day Cup defence, Kent were heavily hit by injuries, with the county bringing in Toby Albert and Ben Geddes on short-term loans from Hampshire and Surrey.

Geddes’ team-mate, bowler Conor McKerr, has also had two brief Kent spells in the last two years while Aron Nijjar last week signed on loan from Essex for the season run-in.

Cook explained: “Unfortunately, with the size of staff we have right now, there’s no getting around it. We’ll end up going out on loan.

“Some of the things I need to look at is ‘Is our squad size too small?’ and ‘Do we need to recruit a little bit more strength-in-depth?’.

“Being a bit biased in that, I think we need another couple of bowlers.

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“Then we may need to look at a couple of other players, as well, to strengthen not only our depth of squad but, also, raise the quality.”

Despite Spitfires failing to get out of their group in this year’s 50-over tournament, home-grown Jaydn Denly and Jas Singh could be afforded more first-team opportunities if they continue to impress.

Cook said: “Jaydn coming through is probably a nice example of a player not necessarily coming in at the bottom and coming all the way through from under-10s.

“He’s actually entered into the pathway from a different angle. He’s had success in club cricket, played at Whitstable and done really well, and been a late developer in that regard.

“Then, if you look at Jas, he’s come in right the way through from the bottom.

“There’s multiple entry points for people to join the pathway, that’s important so there’s not just a very narrow funnel in.”

Cook is set to step away from his specialist bowling coach role and, although he still wants to be involved, he confirmed someone will be taking his former position.

“We will look to replace me as a bowling coach,” he confirmed.

“I’m just going to be a release valve so we’ll still be looking to have a full-time bowling coach, a full-time batting coach and, obviously, a head coach.

“We’ll just be looking to maybe spread those resources a bit deeper down the pathway.”

The fact Cook still intends to play an active role could, potentially, put off some replacements.

But he already seems to have an idea of the sort of coach he wants to take over his duties, saying: “The job description will be done in a certain way for a certain type of person that we want.

“We might want a very technical bowling coach.

“I know, at the moment my plan for a lot of the bowlers this winter, putting my bowling coach hat on, was doing a lot of really good technical work.

“So maybe we’ll look for a bowling coach that is more very technically-oriented. They could be working up and down the pathway technically and we’d sacrifice a bit of match gamesmanship in that regard, possibly.

“But we’ll have to have a look at the end of the season.”