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Matt Walker wants his team to go a step further and win One-Day Cup

Matt Walker says Kent have proved a lot of people wrong after reaching the final of the Royal London One-Day Cup.

The Spitfires beat Worcestershire in the semi-final of the competition on Sunday after knocking out the reigning champions, Nottinghamshire, on Thursday.

After losing their opening two matches, Walker’s side went on to win seven of the next eight games to set up a tie with Hampshire at Lord’s.

Kent head coach Matt Walker. Picture: Ady Kerry
Kent head coach Matt Walker. Picture: Ady Kerry

Head coach Walker said: “We have proved a lot of people wrong at the moment and we need to go one step further and really finish the job off.

“We haven’t won anything yet and until we do we probably haven’t quite got to where we want to be as a side.

“If someone told us at the start of the season we would be in a Lord’s final I think a lot of people would be querying that.”

New signing Heino Kuhn has been spearheading the One-Day Cup success making four hundreds in his last five matches.

Matt Henry and Darren Stevens are joint second leading wicket-takers with 16 each while Alex Blake has hit the most sixes in the competition with 21.

Walker said: “We back ourselves now and in this competition we have grown and grown. The performances just keep coming from everybody.

“We want to win this and we’ve put a lot of hard work into getting there and the next step is to win it.”

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To get to the final Kent spent more than 10 days on the road travelling from a County Championship match at Bristol, to the quarter-final in Nottingham and the semi-final at Worcester.

Walker, the captain Sam Billings and rest of the backroom staff have worked hard on building a new dressing room ‘culture’.

He said: “The overriding feeling is privilege and pride. I’m really excited where the culture has gone very quickly and we set out this season to get good people in the dressing room and buy into that culture.

“We had fun and enjoy each other’s company. We are developing what we want to be the finest dressing room in the country.

“When you lead a group of people like that, regardless of the results, you feel very lucky and to have the support team around me are magnificent.”

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