Managing director of cricket Angus Fraser could not hide his disappointment after seeing Middlesex’s hopes of promotion in the County Championship ended by Kent.

A three-wicket loss at Lord’s, as Kent successfully chased 155 in a low-scoring contest, left the 2016 champions in fourth place and 59 points behind their conquerors in second place, with Warwickshire a further 12 points clear at the top.

And Fraser said: “The disappointment is that the defeat ends the chance of us getting promoted this year and that was our principle goal at the start of the season.

“It’s a quiet dressing room now because the lads know we’ve not played well enoguh again.

“We made mistakes and struggled again to get the sort of scores on the board that are going to dominate matches. We fought right to the end and showed a lot of character, but in low-scoring tight affairs like this you’re never going to win them all.”

Fraser felt there were some positives to be taken from the defeat, though, particularly the performance of two of their youngsters.

He added: “It was another fast-forward game, which we seem to have played a lot of at Lord’s this year. Obviously, I’m disappointed to have lost, but we took some pride out of this match too with the two youngsters out there, in Ethan Bamber and Martin Andersson.

“To see them play and looking as though they can compete on this stage is really encouraging.”