Kent clung on to deny Northamptonshire a sensational, record-breaking win in the Rothesay County Championship, closing on 160 for eight at stumps, after a stomach-churningly tense final hour.

A hitherto sterile contest finally ignited on the final day as Yuzvendra Chahal and Calvin Harrison nearly span the visitors to an improbable victory using the much-maligned Kookaburra ball.

Northants defied the elements, batted aggressively and declared on 722 for six, smashing the record for the highest score by any side at this venue, eclipsing the 676 made by Australia in 1921. Saif Zaib made 196 not out and Justin Broad was unbeaten on 157, an unbroken partnership of 298. It also meant they led by 156, giving Kent a minimum of 59 overs to navigate, 11 of which were lost due to rain.

Chahal took 4 for 51 and for the second consecutive week it was left to Joey Evison stave off defeat. He hit 49 from 104 balls and was helped by a dramatic late return from Tawanda Muyeye, who left the ground at lunchtime due to personal reasons, but returned to bat at ten and was there with Evison at stumps.

Northants resumed with Saif Zaib on 150 and Justin Broad on 107, but just 12 minutes were possible before the rain became too heavy for the players to continue.

18 overs were wiped out and when play resumed, but Zaib and Broad tried to make up for the lost time. Broad took two from Denly to pass 150.

Gallows humour prevailed. When Parkinson conceded his 200th run his team mates applauded and he put an arm around Zaib, who was on 195 at the time, as if to say: “that’s how you do it.”

The rain returned and with Northamptonshire on 722 for six lunch was taken early, but this time only one over was lost and Kent faced a potentially awkward afternoon, under leaden skies.

It looked even more awkward when Liam Guthrie sent Jaydn Denly’s off stump cartwheeling, four balls into the reply, but after four overs the rain returned with Kent on 12 for one and 11 further overs were chalked off, leaving Kent with a minimum of 48 to survive.

Chahal then bowled Ekansh Singh for 37, but despite a succession of appeals of varying conviction Ben Compton and Daniel Bell-Drummond steered Kent to the relative safety of 76 for two at tea.

After which they fell apart. Bell-Drummond edged the first ball of the evening session, from Harrison, to Broad at first slip and Compton then went trying to sweep Chahal, victim of a low catch at square leg by Tim Robinson.

With Tawanda Muyeye apparently unable to bat for personal reasons Kent were effectively five down with 45 minutes to go before the final hour.

Harry Finch cut Harrison straight to Broad for four and Matt Parkinson strolled out with Kent still 61 in arrears. Chahal then took two wickets in two balls: Parkinson survived 12 deliveries until Broad took his third catch of the innings, this time off and Wes Agar went for a heave and was out for a golden duck, caught behind by Lewis McManus.

Matt Quinn played more sensibly until he lofted the 57th ball he faced from Harrison to Chahal for 13.

Yet to widespread surprise Muyeye then came out at number 10 and Kent had a major let off when Evison was dropped by Ricardo Vasconcelos at silly point. The duo crucially steered Kent into the lead and when 5.50pm was reached Kent were officially safe.

Northamptonshire’s Darren Lehmann said: “We lost a little bit of time and it probably cost us in the end but you can’t control the weather, we knew it was coming at some stage, at least it didn’t go for too long so it gave us a chance, we bowled for 61 overs and put down a couple of tough chances.

“If you hold those it might be a different story obviously, but I’m really proud of the way they played. They took it on this morning to try and get us that 160 lead, which we needed, and then the bowlers went about their work. Another hour would have been lovely but it wasn’t meant to be, but if they keep playing like that I’ll be pretty happy with them.

“We probably would have batted for an hour and twenty (if there’d been a full day). With the spinners that would have given us close to 80 overs probably, the way they were going and that would have been enough time, but having said that Kent might have played differently so they fought hard at the end and our thoughts are with Muyeye. He’s having some problems and he’s a good player, he was quite calm at the end with Evison wasn’t he?

“We dropped him a couple of times and but look that happens in a game of cricket. You’ve got to make every chance when you’re trying to defend and bowl a side out. If we’d got to 200 in front it might have been a different story I suppose.

“You’d love (Zaib) to get 200 but I’m sure he’ll make 200 somewhere down the line and to be fair he probably had the opportunity to slog a couple more if he’d wanted to but it is what it is, he played beautifully and he’s disappointed not to get 200 but as you said the team comes first, we needed the overs and as you saw at the end it was pretty tight.

“That track turned enough on the last day and we thought it might, it was always going to be a tough chase and that’s what it is on that sort of wicket when it’s turning so that’s why we batted past them, bonus point sometimes comes into it. Maybe we could have declared behind and set up a chase but the way they played on day four it might have been quite tough. For us I’m really happy with the way we played, I can’t complain at all.”

Kent’s Adam Hollioake said: “You can’t say it’s boring! The wicket started to turn more at the end and obviously without us having the opportunity to win the game we had to try and save it. That brought the men around the bat but thankfully we carried on being semi-positive so at least we scored the runs and got past that total but certainly, it did make for some interesting watching.

“Mate I’m a 53-year-old man, I’m always angry so I don’t think we got out of jail … I mean we did because if the game had been another couple of hours we probably would have lost but we played some pretty good cricket for two and half days.

“We got tired and took our foot of the gas at the end of the third day and then today scoreboard pressure got to us a little bit, but we’re a young side and we had a couple of guys playing in their first couple of games, so they will learn a lot for that and you know I’m happy. We played the younger guys to try and build for the future a little bit and they certainly learned some lessons in this game, the hard way.

“The thing I said at the beginning of the day was, if we sit around and defend then we’ll get beaten, which we would have done. So we had to keep trying to be positive to get past that score to try and make them bat again and as you can see, once we did get past that score, albeit eight down, it would have been nice to go past it three or four down, then the game’s off.

“I was urging the guys to still be positive and if you do that you have to take a couple of rash shots in the process but if we’d sat around defending we definitely would have lost.”

(On Tawanda) “His brother was in a car accident so he went to go and check on him and make sure he was fine. Once he was fine he came back so I think it’s a good reminder to all of us that we play this game because we love it, because it’s fun, it’s a game and I think those things were put in perspective. It triggered me a little bit so I was just grateful we were on and that we were able to get our minds back on the game.

“(Joey Evison) is very calm, he has a very calm demeanour in the way he goes about his business and no matter what the state of the game he that same demeanour. That’s a couple of innings he’s played like that for us now so it’s good having him around and nice having him back from his side strain.”