Spitfires coach Matt Walker says his batsmen need to take more individual responsibility after a hugely frustrating NatWest T20 Blast defeat at home to Gloucestershire.

Kent restricted the visitors to a total of 138-8 with some fine bowling and slick fielding at the Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence on Tuesday night, only to fall eight runs short in a modest chase on a pitch which proved tricky for batters.

Despite their superb form, Walker insisted Kent cannot rely on openers Joe Denly and Daniel Bell-Drummond to get them into winning positions.

He admitted: "It was frustrating. I'm a bit lost for words. We had a great first half and I thought we bowled really well and fielded really well. I thought (138) was well under par.

"We knew it was not going to be a straightforward chase because the wicket wasn't great, to be honest, but we should be chasing that total down comfortably.

"We lost our way again in the middle overs - it's happened before, it happened last year and we didn't have any answers to what they threw at us unfortunately.

"We lost our way, lost wickets, took some poor options, nobody really grabbed it by the horns and took responsibility to go and win us the game."

He added: "It's really frustrating. It's a game we should win 99 times out of 100 but it wasn't to be.

"We have got to learn from that pretty quickly because we can't rely on the top-three to win us games every week.

"We're going to need it from top to bottom to get us home in run chases like that. We fell well short."

Skipper Sam Northeast added: “I thought we did really well in the field to keep them below 150, which was our target.

"We knew it would be tough through those middle periods with the bowlers they have in Benny Howell and Tom Smith.

"We felt we had enough batting calibre to chase that down and maybe we could have gone harder in the powerplay, or we could have chosen better options through the middle.

"It wasn’t the greatest pitch in the world but you have to adapt as a team. We thought we could easily chase 138 down, but it wasn’t to be as we didn’t bat well enough through those middle overs.”