Warwickshire have beaten Kent by an innings and 46 runs in their LV= Insurance County Championship game at Canterbury, bowling the hosts out for 332 on day three.

Oliver Hannon-Dalby took four for 59 in the second innings and finished with eight for 115 in the match, as Warwickshire issued a warning to their title rivals with an overwhelming victory.

Harry Finch made 67 and Jack Leaning 64, but the hosts were left to rue a dismal first innings performance.

Kent began day three on 55 for one, still 323 behind Warwickshire’s first innings score of 549 for seven, with Joe Denly and Ben Compton not out on 29 and 17 respectively.

An early appeal for a catch off Compton’s shoulder drew a cry of: “Are you Australia in disguise?” from the Frank Woolley Stand and although he survived that one, he became the morning’s first victim in the 26th over, when he nicked Hannon-Dalby behind for 26.

Denly made 45 from 105 balls before he was removed by Hannon-Dalby, caught by Michael Burgess after the ball seemed to ricochet off his pads.

Finch and Leaning batted through till rain brought an early lunch at 12.52 pm. Play resumed at 2.15, with nine balls bowled before a second, briefer delay of 20 minutes, resulting in a cumulative loss of nine overs.

It was Kent’s biggest stand of the match and worth exactly a hundred, but it ended when Leaning fell into a trap. With three fielders crowding the bat on the leg side he tried repeating a shot he’d played in Yates’ previous over and this time the bowler had him caught by Jacob Bethell.

Jordan Cox lasted 17 balls before he tried to sweep Yates and was lbw for four, leaving Kent on 223 for five at tea.

Finch’s obdurate innings came to an end when Chris Rushworth bowled him off stump with the new ball and when Henry Brookes had Joey Evison caught behind for 37, the last of Kent’s defensive-minded batters had gone.

Grant Stewart decided to have some fun, whacking successive sixes off Rushworth including one that went into a third-tier balcony in the Old Dover Road flats and he hung around for 44 balls, putting on 64 with Hamid Qadri before he hit Hannon-Dalby to Glenn Maxwell at gully for 40.

Any realistic hopes Kent had of taking the game into a fourth day ended when Qadri went to the very next ball, lbw to Maxwell for 30 and the victory was confirmed when Arshdeep Singh drove Hannon-Dalby to Will Rhodes at mid on in the next over.

Kent’s Matthew Walker said: “On a wicket like that 170 just isn’t going to cut it, unfortunately. You win the toss, it’s good toss to win, a nice wicket to bat on and unfortunately that performance left us with an enormous task.

“If you can bowl them for a similar score you’re in the game, but I think on that wicket we all knew what was going to happen. They set there stall out and showed us how to bat, it was as simple as that. When you’re facing a deficit of nearly 400 it’s a long way back and we tried our hardest in the field and probably didn’t bowl as well as we’d have liked, but this isn’t on the bowlers.

“There were some glimpses and it was really good to see Joe and Jack getting back to their best. Both of have been short of runs but I think Joe played beautifully and Jack, I think that’s as good as I’ve seen for a long time. Grant played nicely in both innings, Hamid did well and obviously there was Finchy at the end but if you’re going to make something really special happen you’re going to need to put a few ones in front of those 40s and 50s.”

Kent’s Harry Finch said: “It was a tough one to take. I think it’s pretty obvious we lost our game in the first innings. We were 70 for six or something which just wasn’t good enough.

“We bowled really well on a pretty docile pitch and then in the second innings we showed a bit of fight, but ideally one myself, Jack or Denners goes and gets a big hundred there and if that had happened you never know, but definitely the feeling in the dressing room is that the first innings has cost us.

“It was a case of trying to bat the day if you can and try and take it an hour at a time, but runs are really important. If you get past them you never know, but credit to them, they bowled really well and really straight and unintentionally we ended up scoring a lot slower than we’d planned to.

“I thought Rob Yates batted brilliantly for them and he showed in passages that he didn’t score very quickly and he absorbed pressure. He also showed that when you get to 70 you’ve got to turn those into big hundred and fifties.

“We’ve played well in the last few games and we played well against Surrey but it was a one in a hundred effort for them to chase down 500. The game at Northants was fantastic as well. We’ll take a lot of confidence from the last few days and put the first day behind us.”