Kent Cricket coach Jimmy Adams in positive mood ahead of Royal London One-Day Cup semi-final against Warwickshire at Edgbaston
Published: 00:00, 04 September 2014
Jimmy Adams is bullish about Kent’s chances of reaching just their second Lord’s Final in 17 years when they visit Warwickshire in the Royal London One-Day Cup semi-final on Thursday afternoon.
It has been 36 years since Kent won a trophy in the longer forms of limited overs cricket and seven since their T20 glory at Edgbaston, however Adams revealed the club is riding a wave of positivity which he hopes will lead them to glory from 2pm.
He said: “People are certainly looking forward to this game and there’s a lot of positive energy at the club leading up to a huge occasion for all of us.
“It’s been a wonderful journey up to this point and the lads have played some really good cricket - they deserve to be there and we’re hoping they can go a step further.”
The former West Indian skipper added: “We don’t want the journey to end now, we want to take it two steps beyond Thursday - to get to the final and then win it - but let’s take it one step at a time.”
Kent have had the distraction of a drawn clash with Glamorgan this week, which all-but ended any hopes of Championship promotion when the visitors batted out the final session on Wednesday afternoon.
Adams insisted: “We’ve been busy with the Glamorgan game, but come Wednesday evening we’ll start focusing on the job in hand.
“Everyone will want to play, but we pretty much know the players we are using. By and large they’ve been a pretty settled crew of 13 or 14 players who have played across the seven games.”
One player who won’t feature is spinner James Tredwell, despite being dropped by England for the fourth of five ODIs with India on Tuesday, with Adams revealing: “We have been on to the ECB but he will not be released.”
Adams says his team full of young talent will benefit from the big-game experience and added: “It will be a new experience for quite a lot of them but they deserve to be there.
“If they get things right on the day the history books will take care of themselves, but they do have a wonderful opportunity to experience what it feels like to be in a big game atmosphere - they are looking forward to that.”
NatWest T20 Blast champions Warwickshire are also in the hunt for the LV= County Championship title as they seek an historic treble, however Adams claimed: “It would be great if we could stop them.
“We’re under no illusions as to how tough a task it will be but we have youth, enthusiasm and loads of ability.
“We have shown we have match-winners and we lack fear - there’s more than enough self-belief and confidence going into a fixture like this.
“We just hope we see the best that Kent can do, and if we do that on the day then I’m sure that will be good enough to win.”
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Alex Hoad