Zak Crawley will start the season full of confidence after scoring an impressive unbeaten 103 in Kent’s two-day warm-up game against Surrey at Canterbury last week.

The 20-year-old academy graduate shared an unbroken stand of 217 with South African Heino Kuhn (105 not out) as Kent recovered from the loss of two early wickets to reach 405-3.

Alex Blake and wicketkeeper Adam Rouse both made unbeaten half-centuries and Crawley, who batted at No.4, said it was good to score runs against such an accomplished Division 1 attack.

He said: “l didn’t think we were going to get outside at any point during pre-season with the way the weather was going so to play Surrey was great.

“You just want to face as many balls as you can at this time of the season to get ready. Luckily, I was out there for a while with Heino and that was great

“It was brilliant watching the way he went about it. I thought I was 20-30 runs ahead of him the whole way and then I looked up at the scoreboard and he was ahead of me.

"He just seemed so calm, he didn’t play a shot in anger. I felt like I was going off like a train and yet he was way ahead of me.

“There won’t be many attacks we’ll face as good as that this year so to know that I can do it is a real benefit for me going forward.”

Crawley admits he has high expectations of himself and his aim is to challenge for a place in all three formats.

He added: “I feel I’m capable of scoring runs at this level. The main thing I want to do is score runs in a winning cause, so as long as I can do that and Kent are winning games, that would be a great year for me.”