Adam Hollioake has already experienced the highs and lows of coaching a cricket team with Kent.

From being the worst red-ball team in the country after finishing bottom of the County Championship Division Two table in 2025, Kent go into this season’s final round of fixtures with promotion in their own hands.

Kent currently occupy the second promotion spot and are four points ahead of third-placed Northamptonshire, who visit Middlesex on Thursday.

If Kent match or better the Northants result when they host bottom side Gloucestershire in Canterbury, they will bounce back to the top flight two years after relegation in 2024 under Matthew Walker.

But Hollioake, who replaced Walker in 2025, says he had doubts over whether or not he was in the right job after a poor first season in which Kent won just two of their 14 Championship games.

“There was a time at the beginning of the year when I was questioning whether coaching was actually the right thing for me,” the 55-year-old told BBC Radio Kent.

“Of course, we all have self doubts at times, so I’m pretty stubborn and pretty resilient.

“But I just demanded we keep those standards high and keep coming back to them and I kept on trying to reassure the guys it would turn around.

“There was a time there when I wasn’t sure if that was going to be the case but I’m glad to see now it’s starting to get some positive results.”

Kent have won seven of their 13 matches this season and have already amassed 78 more points than they managed last time around.

Hollioake puts the improvement down to taking it one game at a time and using a “simple template of how we’re going to play and reverting back to that no matter what’s gone on in the game before”.

The former England all-rounder said he was “pretty confident” Kent would put in a good performance against Gloucestershire after bouncing back from defeat at Derbyshire with a seven-wicket win over Lancashire.

“That’s all we can do. Northampton will do what Northampton do, the weather will do what it does up there and it’ll do what it’ll do here,” Hollioake added.

“All we can do is just keep executing the plans that we’ve been executing since the fourth week of the season and keep going back and trying to stick to that template.

“If we do that, then the other stuff is out of our control.”