Matt Walker has admitted Kent are unlikely to make many more permanent signings ahead of their return to the championship’s elite.

The club signed Nottinghamshire seamer Matt Milnes before the season’s end and then added Dutch left-arm fast bowler Fred Klaassen, but that could be the extent of their business.

The door remains open to a return for Matt Henry, the country’s leading wicket taker this summer, but much will depend on whether the New Zealand paceman is selected for his country’s 2019 World Cup squad.

Head coach Walker said: “We’ve signed Matt Milnes and Freddie Klaassen and that will probably be about it.

“We’ve got some pull for an overseas but that is going to be tricky to sort what with the World Cup here next year.

“We don’t know who is going to be in which squad and it can be difficult if you try to second guess what might happen.

“It goes without saying that we’d love to have Matt Henry back, and he’d very much like to return but the situation is not that straightforward.

“He’s on the fringes of the New Zealand squad at the moment but that’s not to say he won’t get in and if he does it pretty much rules him out.

“The World Cup starts in May and I think it’s unlikely any country will let players play county cricket in that month building up to the tournament.

“We’ve also got to wait and see what happens with Sam (skipper Sam Billings) and Joe (Joe Denly) and their international commitments.

“That might change our thinking about what type of overseas player we go for.”

Walker said the county have been pleased with their recent recruitment and says where possible they will continue too look for young, hungry players that can be developed.

He added: “We’re on a limited budget but then bringing in (big earning) players is not really our philosophy.

“We’d much rather invest in young players, be it players coming out of our academy, like Zak Crawley and Ollie Robinson, or in young players that we can develop so that they become part of the set-up for the next few years.

“We feel there’s much more reward in doing that.”

Walker cited seam bowler Harry Podmore as a good example of that, saying the former Middlesex man has made tremendous progress since his move to Kent last spring.

Walker said: “Harry was an interesting one. His name had popped up a few times, he’s only 24 but it seemed like he had been around for a while.

"He'd not played a huge amount of cricket and had gone through the experience of being on loan. You don't always quite see the best of people in that situation but when his name came up again, we did our research and the feedback was always very positive.

“He fitted the profile in terms of the sort of person we wanted and to see him grow as a player in the way he did this summer was brilliant.”