KENT skipper David Fulton left Blackpool believing his side only had themselves to blame for not forcing a vital championship win over Lancashire.

Despite taking six wickets in the opening hour to enforce the follow-on, Kent were unable to prize out their former overseas star Carl Hooper, who batted two and half sessions to land the red rose county a hard-fought draw.

Fulton stressed afterwards: "We had long enough to win the game. We did have time out for Thursday's rain but that gave us 46 overs to rest up the bowlers, so I still felt we let the game slip.

"I felt Andrew Symond’s bowling spell before and after tea was excellent. He looked as though he wanted to make something happen. Had we had one or two others with his kind of presence then we might have won it.

"It’s difficult to have that kind of presence on the field, but Symo has it and I would like to see it from others because there were odd times out there when sloppy things happened and we took our foot off the gas."

On a fourth-day pitch covered in cracks and crazing that had revealed indifferent bounce from day one, Fulton was clearly disappointed his two rookie spinners Rob Ferley and James Tredwell had not played a bigger role.

"The pitch didn’t deteriorate as we thought it would to be honest," said the Kent captain. "It was a good toss to win and we got ourselves into the box seat, but we were always missing that little bit of guile to force the win.

"The wicket didn’t spin as much as I’d hoped and our two youngsters still have a lot to learn. Added to that, we were also down to one overseas player up against their two and had we had Mohammad Sami on that pitch the odd shooter at his pace would have been devastating and he might have reproduced similar figures to Maidstone.

"It was an honour and an absolute pleasure to have played with Carl during his time at Kent, but it’s an absolute pain in the backside to play against him.

"Talent wise, and when he’s in the mood, he is still the best in the world and, when he’s seriously switched on playing against a county attack on a flat pitch, there is no better batsman to watch.

Fulton added the squad would be enjoying a three-day break before reporting back for practice ahead of Sunday’s National League trip to play Yorkshire in Scarborough.

Though victory in the north east will ease Kent’s Division 1 relegation fears, Fulton already has his sights set on championship improvement against Essex at the end of the month.

"It’s not a bad time to have a few days off and allow the lads to re-group," he added. "We have guys like Amjad Khan, Sami and Min Patel coming back from injury and Muralitharan arriving. We can go into the Canterbury Week game with Essex in decent shape and fully rested.

"Our batsmen will know that if we can get runs on the board we will have Sami and Murali to give us the extra firepower with the ball and that’s a pretty re-assuring feeling for a side and a skipper."