Spitfires' skipper Rob Key admitted he would have persisted with his game plan to bat second at a cloudy Brit Oval on Friday night for fear of not knowing what might have been a good target to set.

As it was, the decision was taken out of Key's hands when he lost the toss against Surrey counterpart Jonathan Batty, leaving Kent to defend 181-5 to impossibly short boundaries when bowling from the Vauxhall End.

After the 13-run win Key said: "I'd have still batted second here because it's so tough setting a target on a great pitch and with such tin-pot boundaries.

"We never knew if we had enough, you could have some really big overs out there tonight, so it was always going to be tough no matter how many runs we scored going in first.

"I feel 180 is always a good score in Twenty20, especially with our bowling attack you would back us to come through having put that on the board first. We might have got closer to 200 given the start we got, but our big hitters didn't quite come off at the end there.

"Having said that, we have to be positive about things. We still got enough runs to win despite not being quite at our best with the bat."

After yet another excellent fielding and bowling display, Key added: "I'm sure Surrey must still be wondering why they let Azhar Mahmood go, he's such a shrewd cricketer, he wins us games. Ryan McLaren bowled brilliantly, but yet again Azhar was right up there with him in terms of consistency."

Looking ahead to their Saturday lunch-time trip to play Hampshire at the Rose Bowl, Key added: "We'll have to see what the deck is like first before we see who will play down there.

"To some extent short boundaries may dictate who plays almost as much as the pace of the pitch."