The Kent Spitfires handed the Hampshire Hawks only their second Vitality Blast defeat of the season when they beat them by seven wickets at Canterbury on Sunday.

James Vince hit a blistering 84, but the South Group leaders were held to 176 for six, having been 97-1 at halfway: Grant Stewart took four for 32.

Daniel Bell-Drummond was Kent’s top scorer with 54 and he put on 95 for the opening wicket with Harry Finch, who made 45. Sam Billings got Kent across the line with an unbeaten 50, sealing the win when he glanced Sonny Baker for four with 8 balls remaining.

Kent chose to bowl and Vince dominate the opening stand: Toby Albert was still on four when he reached 50.Albert offered the first real chance but Jake Lintott couldn’t cling on to a violent return chance when he was on 13.

However, he’d only added three more when he drove Joe Denly to Zak Crawley at long off.

Grant Stewart then bowled Vince with his second delivery, before he bowled Joe Weatherley for 24 as he attempted a heave.

Hilton Cartwright was on two when he set off for a single and went down with what looked like a serious leg injury. He was able to continue after several minutes of treatment, but hadn’t added to his score when he hit Stewart to Dudgeon at long off.

Ben Mayes clubbed Stewart for six but miscued the next ball to Crawley.

Klaassen then held Middlesex to just four from the final over – with Bell-Drummond running out Tristan Stubbs with a direct hit as he tried to get a second off an overthrow.

Bell-Drummond was dropped by Stubbs when he was on 43 and had hit Fuller to midwicket. Although he eventually holed out to Liam Dawson and was caught by Fuller, at that point Kent were over halfway home.

The run rate began to climb and Crawley went for an uncomfortable, seven-ball four, bowled by Chris Wood off a full toss, but Billings lifted some of the pressure in the 15th, with two ramped sixes off Baker, which were followed by three wides.

In the 16th Billings reversed Dawson for six and four, but Wood kept Hampshire in it when he bowled Finch for 45.

However, Joe Denly hit Scott Currie for six at the start of the 18th and Billings finished the job.

Kent’s Grant Stewart said: “Actually there was a stage there where I thought I mightn’t bowl at all because obviously Milnes, Klaassen, Joe and Jake were bowling nicely, but then Bilbo wanted to change it up a little bit and get an over in. It went all right, so I guess he kept going with me instead of going back for the spinner. It’s the way T20 goes, you’ve got to adapt on the go.

“It’s just the way it falls sometimes. It can turn pretty quickly in T20. You can bowl some nice balls and they get into the boundary. I was just glad we got a good result today for sure.

“That looked a tricky-ish wicket in the way he (Vince) was hitting the ball. It was pretty impressive as well, so I was glad to see the back of him and sort of stagnate the innings a bit there.

“I believe we’ve got one of the best batting line-ups in the competition. And yeah, it goes to show the quality we’ve got. And I thought Finchie played an unreal knock. He probably goes under the radar, but he just held the innings together there and then it allowed Daniel and Sam and the others to sort of come in and really take the game on, as they do so well.”

Hampshire’s James Vince said: “We’re obviously disappointed to come out on the wrong side. I think we actually played a lot of decent cricket for large chunks of that game. I think in both innings, the last five overs with bat and ball, they won that period. It was crunch time in the game, and it got them over the line.

“From the batting half, I think from the position we were in, it would have been nice to get another 20 or 30. It actually wasn’t an easy wicket, but obviously the boundary and the wind that way was so small, it’s quite hard to know what a good score is. If someone gets thrown towards that side, you could end up with 200 plus.

“We did a lot of stuff well, but Billings came in and had a really good knock, at a time when they needed ten an over. If we’d got him out there we might have got over the line.

“Both times I’ve got 50 (this season), we’ve lost! I didn’t find it that easy to be honest, it’s one of those where you mis-time it and find the gap and then hit a couple out the middle and get some boundaries. I think it definitely did get harder, the ball got softer and perhaps they worked out an area and came up with a better plan and we weren’t quite able to get going. We just weren’t able to quite have that big over in 15-20 to get us up towards 200, but the middle order has been unbelievable for us this year so far.”

Picture supplied by Kent Cricket.