Top-order batter Daniel Bell-Drummond was only 17 when he signed a three-year professional contract with Kent in 2011 and he made his first-class debut later that summer, impressing with a fluent 80 from 103 balls against Loughborough MCCU.

He was widely regarded as one of the most exciting young batters in the UK, and his Kent captain Rob Key declared he had the talent to play 100 Tests. Much was expected of Bell-Drummond at the Under-19 World Cup in Australia in August 2012 but he made four single-figure scores in six matches, as England finished a disappointing fifth. Kent showed faith in him, however, and he secured the No. 3 slot in their county side in 2013, scoring 466 runs. He was also entrusted with an opening role in T20 matches. Bell-Drummond's maiden Championship hundred, a patient affair against Derbyshire in Canterbury, was one of two he made in 2014, when he topped Kent's Championship averages, although he fell just short of 1000 runs.

He began to justify Key's optimism when, at 21, he thrilled with a 92-ball hundred against Australia in an Ashes warm-up game in 2015, putting a first-innings duck against Mitchell Johnson behind him and achieving three figures with successive sixes off the legspin of Fawad Alam. His red-ball cricket remained inconsistent, but by the end of the season, Bell-Drummond got a call-up to the England Lions limited-overs squad.

In 2016 he made 171 not out in a record List A partnership of 367 with Ben Duckett for Lions against Sri Lanka A at his home ground. Later that year he added a 200-run stand with Tom Alsop in a 50-over game for Lions in Colombo. In 2017, he had another record-breaking partnership, this time in T20, when he put on 207 with Joe Denly against Essex in Chelmsford, but though Kent earned promotion, the season was a personal disappointment as he made only one fifty in 13 matches.

A couple of low-scoring years followed his Lions exploits, leaving Bell-Drummond unsold at the Hundred draft in 2019. He used some time in grade cricket and the Covid pandemic to work on his T20 power-hitting, and was the leading run-scorer in the T20 Blast in 2020 and third-highest when Kent won the title the next season.