After a month of “The Hundred”, the domestic cricketing attention will on tonight centre on Canterbury as the Kent Spitfires and Birmingham Bears face off for the last place at Vitality Blast Finals Day.

Spitfires coach Matt Walker who like many of his players have returned to the Spitfire Ground after being heavily involved in the new competition, can’t wait for the excitement to continue as he told KSN.

Walker told us, “Its brilliant when such a high-profile competition comes to an end, you go straight into another one which is just as exciting to look forward to. Had we not come back to Friday night, the build up to four-day cricket would have been completely different. But we’ve got this game ahead of us and it doesn’t get any bigger!”

“You all want nights like this at your home base and make no mistake, it’s a Quarter Final that we want to win!”

“We’ve worked very hard to get ourselves into this position – now it’s down to knock out stages and that was the challenge at the start, the goal if you like at the start of the year, to give yourselves a chance to win the Trophy at Finals Day by getting into the knockouts. We won the group and earned the right to host a Quarter Final.”

“It just happens that we’ve had a nice weeks build up to it which is fairly rare. People have come back after being away in The Hundred and if I’m honest it does feel like pre-season in some ways, everyone getting back together again so that we can focus in on Friday night.”

“It’s what we all want and its what to play in front of a full house at Canterbury in a really meaningful game, and you don’t get much more meaningful than a Quarter Final of The Blast!”

“The great thing about a home knockout tie is that is a “reward” for the fans as they get to support us at home and I’m sure they will back us and be in good voice and be the proverbial “twelfth man” for us on the night, really drive us on and help us all have a great night.

“Dare I say that Canterbury has been a bit of a fortress for us in the competition this year and I hope with their help we can make it even more so for one more game this year, get behind us and hopefully we can put on a show for them!”

“The players are really excited, we’ve had a good week of preparation and bring on Friday night. We’ll be at full strength, Adam Milnes is still with us after a busy Hundred campaign. Qais (Ahmed) is also back and available, but with him, there is so much going on back home in Afghanistan and that of course is a massive distraction as you can imagine. His head is in a bit of a spin but he’s here as he can’t go home even if he wanted to.

“We’ve just got to make sure that we look after him and keep him in the right frame of mind, hopefully keep his mind off what is happening back home, but that will be almost impossible to do. Its sadly out of our control, we’ve all seen the headlines and the footage, its dreadful.

“No one can imagine what he is going through, we feel for him desperately and we’ll support him as much as we can, as I’m sure all of the “Kent family” will, if he’s not in the right frame of mind, we’ll cross that bridge as well. He’s a young man in an impossible situation.”