Alex Blake has been working hard to play himself back into form for Kent and got the rewards against Middlesex.

Blake had scored just 39 runs in the Vitality Blast competition prior to the win at Beckenham on Sunday.

He has played for the seconds and in the Kent League to get time in the middle.

The 29-year-old scored a match-winning 57 from 27 balls in the win against Middlesex.

Blake said: “It’s been a frustrating campaign for me. I don’t feel like I’ve batted that much and the last couple of knocks I’ve failed to score.

“I’ve been a little bit on edge and it’s tough coming in down the order as you don’t get a lot of cricket.

“I’ve been playing some club cricket to try and get more time in the middle. I also played in the second team last week just to get some batting time.

“Thankfully today I could play a part.”

Kent restricted Middlesex to 189-7 at Beckenham after Dawid Malan and Paul Stirling scored 71 in the first six overs.

Daniel Bell-Drummond scored 62 to provide the Spitfires with a good platform for victory. Tight bowling in the middle overs saw the home side need 40 from the final three overs but a flurry of boundaries from Blake helped Kent get to their target with three balls to spare.

Blake said: “I think 200 is probably a par score here. The way they were going after the first six you probably thought they were going to get in excess of 200, so to claw them back to 189 we were still pretty confident going into bat.

“I was always confident batting with everyone. I thought we had enough firepower to get over the line.

“They had a couple of tight overs towards the end that put us back a bit but we were still confident on a good wicket, short boundaries and a good ground.

“It’s a good wicket here and you can express yourself and play your shots. The surroundings are pretty familiar here for me and I do enjoy walking out to bat here at Beckenham and hopefully we can get some more games here in the future.

“I would have liked to have seen it through to the end and hit the winning runs, unfortunately I didn’t quite get hold of it and was caught on the midwicket boundary but the main thing is we got the two points.”