Kent 133 for 3 (Compton 60*, Crawley 54, Parkinson 3-39) trail Lancashire 506 (Croft 155, Vilas 124, Salt 97, Qadri 6-129) by 373 runs
The sensible folk who suggest that we shouldn't play first-class cricket beyond the margins of summer will have to reckon with the April we are enjoying. When Phil Salt eased Jackson Bird's first ball of the morning to deep square-leg for a single, only the barely leafed trees would have convinced a stranger that this game was not taking place in high summer.
The sky was little more than wisped with cloud and you needed to be a belt-and-braces cove to wear a coat. Within ten minutes of the second day beginning at the Spitfire Ground, Steven Croft had taken both Bird and Matt Milnes for off-side boundaries and pragmatic Kent supporters became reconciled to the probability of their batsmen facing a tall score for the second successive game.
Nothing to churn the bowels there, of course. Last week, Ollie Robinson's batsmen piled up 581 for 9 declared in reply to Essex's 514 in a game that was not only drawn but also hung and quartered. Such totals were not unusual in the first round of matches and nor were draws. Some in the crowd reckoned this match would have the same outcome when Kent's openers put on 109 in reply to Lancashire's 506, but the atmosphere changed in a last hour during which Matt Parkinson took three prime wickets, among them that of Zak Crawley for 54 lovely runs. Yet one wondered where those early-season, seaming pitches had gone, along with the 70mph bowlers salivating at the thought of them. Lancashire's batsmen played Darren Stevens with a broomstick on the first day here, albeit a very straight one.
The mileposts of acquisition came and went this morning, some more noticeable than others: Salt passed fifty in his first Lancashire innings; the century partnership came up; then the 400; then Croft's 150. The batsmen walked many of their singles and felt the season's young sun on their backs. On the other hand, the report of Salt's square cut off Nathan Gilchrist would not have shamed a grouse moor. Lancashire's bowlers relaxed in the pavilion and reflected that the best moment of the match was when Dane Vilas won the toss. Then Robinson switched Hamidullah Qadri to the Pavilion End and Croft edged his first ball to the Kent keeper behind the stumps. He departed for 155, which was one short of his career-best.
Half an hour later, Salt lunched on 97, an arrangement which allowed the Lancastrian statisticians some 273 miles away to prepare a mighty array of statistics on the county's debut centurions. Alack, they went unquoted. Qadri's second ball of the afternoon was a squalid long-hop but Salt thrashed it straight to Daniel Bell-Drummond and thus became the first of four batsmen to be dismissed by the Afghanistan-born spinner in 16 balls. Hasan Ali was the last of these and his dismissal left Parkinson facing the hat-trick delivery, a situation which often makes the bowler favourite. But Bolton's finest squirted the thing through gully and Lancashire had 500 up before Qadri knocked out Lamb's middle peg to complete a career-best 6 for 129.
Kent's reply followed the pattern of the previous two days. The only change seemed to be that instead of wickets falling infrequently, they wouldn't fall at all. Hasan's first spell for Lancashire was more successful than his first innings and Crawley needed good judgement to let a few balls go. The Pakistani seamer has a whippy action and his left arm does so little work that a batsman might be disconcerted when the ball is delivered. But Crawley followed his checked drive off Tom Bailey in the third over with an even more conclusive stroke through mid-off when Lancashire's new signing over-pitched. Later the opener would play a back-foot force through the covers off Danny Lamb and a brace of cuts off Luke Wood. These bowlers are not poor players; whatever Kevin Pietersen may say, they are entitled to professional careers. But they were mastered this Good Friday afternoon by a Test match cricketer.
At the other end Ben Compton was batting with comparable assurance and offered further evidence of his determination to make the most of his chance at Canterbury. His century at Chelmsford has not sated his appetite. When Kent came in for tea on 51 without loss after 21 overs, Lancashire's bowlers surely thought that a day or so of hard pounding for slight reward might lie ahead, even if they left such views unexpressed.
As in the visitors' innings, leg spin offered the greatest threat. Perhaps guided by Robinson's late change, Vilas brought Parkinson on from the Pavilion End and Kent's openers paid him due respects. Quite apart from his two wickets, Parkinson conceded only 39 runs off his 20 overs on this second day; like Liam Patterson-White, he is finding that the demise of spin bowling in April has been rather over-egged.
His long spell was broken only by tea and his willingness to vary his flight while maintaining good lengths to batsmen of different heights was admirable. So it was pleasing when he gained his rewards in the final hour of play when what seemed to be a top spinner defeated Crawley's only inelegant stroke of the day and wrecked his stumps.
There was further grief for Kent when Bell-Drummond, having survived two full-throated lbw appeals from Hasan, was bowled by a lovely leg-spinner from Parkinson for 2. Four overs later, Tawanda Muyeye, having picked up Bailey for two assured leg-side fours was lbw to Parkinson when playing no shot. Lancashire thus collected their first point for bowling before Kent picked up theirs for batting. An hour earlier it had seemed a remote prospect.
And still, it had been a day for light rollers and light hearts. You might have thought it a July evening and at least one spectator called it paradise. But then, he had sat in the Frank Woolley Stand and watched Crawley hit boundaries; he knew there were afternoons when poems write themselves.
