Kent bowler Matt Milnes says an early-season pep talk from head coach Adam Hollioake was behind their promotion-winning campaign.<\/p>\n
After losing to Worcestershire by an innings and two runs<\/a> in their third Division Two match in April, Kent then won eight of the next 11 to clinch second spot.<\/a><\/p>\n “Smokes [Hollioake] took the pressure off us and said, ‘just enjoy yourselves’,” Milnes told BBC Radio Kent.<\/p>\n “Everyone was expecting a bit of a slap on the wrist for how we’d been performing at the start of the year, but he went the other way. <\/p>\n “I think it was an amazing bit of man management and everyone responded really well to it.”<\/p>\n Milnes returned to Kent for the 2026 campaign after an injury-hit spell at Yorkshire, where a series of back injuries restricted his appearances.<\/p>\n But the 32-year-old missed only two of Kent’s Championship games in 2026, and took 54 wickets at an average of 20.03, making him the division’s fifth most prolific bowler.<\/p>\n “There were a few times in the season [where] I thought I was going to break but thankfully the backroom staff have been very understanding,” Milnes said.<\/p>\n “They’ve listened to my body, which is something as a bowler you don’t always have. I’m also a bit more experienced with it as well. <\/p>\n “I’ve played probably more cricket this year than I have in three or four years, so I’m delighted with that, let alone the success we’ve had as a team this year.”<\/p>\n Milnes is excited to see where the team can go from here, and says fighting for top-flight honours is their eventual target.<\/p>\n “It’s the pinnacle of county cricket, isn’t it? I think that’s where you want to be,” he said.<\/p>\n “When you talk about winning competitions, for me, Division One champions is the pinnacle. <\/p>\n “So next year [is] a year of consolidation, hopefully, and then you can start looking upwards. <\/p>\n “The way we’ve performed, I think there’s no reason why we can’t get some wins on the board in Division One and put some very good teams under pressure at times.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kent bowler Matt Milnes says an early-season pep talk from head coach Adam Hollioake was behind their promotion-winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-808850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}