Kent have beaten the Northamptonshire Steelbacks by five wickets in Metro Bank Cup at Canterbury.

Harry Finch top-scored with 85 and despite 3 for 44 from Luke Procter, Kent eased home with two overs remaining, Chris Benjamin finishing with an unbeaten 55.

Earlier Northants were dismissed for 253, with 11 balls remaining from their 50 overs.

Ekansh Singh took three wickets in five balls to finish with figures of 3-50, while Grant Stewart took 3 for 33. Three Northants batters got out in their 50s: Nathan McSweeney made 58, Ricardo Vasconcelos 55 and George Bartlett 54.

Kent chose to bowl in front of a crowd of over 2,000, but didn’t really threaten until Ekansh put down a violent caught and bowled chance off Vasconcelos when he was on 39.

It was 75 without loss when Grant Stewart broke through, getting Gus Miller caught by Jaydn Denly at square leg for 18.

Stewart then had Rob Keogh caught by Sam Northeast for eight at cover, before Matt Milnes took a brilliant diving catch to remove Vasconcelos at square leg.

However, Bartlett and McSweeney put on 116 for the fourth wicket, the partnership only broken when Ekansh got both of them in the 41st. McSweeney hit him to Ben Dawkins at long on and three balls later he bowled Bartlett.

With the first ball of his next over Ekansh bowled Lewis McManus for two, and Milnes then had Aadi Sharma caught by Daniel Bell-Drummond for eight.

Procter went for 19, bowled behind the back of his legs by Matt Parkinson and the visitors were all out when Dom Leech was lbw to Keith Dudgeon for eight.

Procter struck in the fourth over of Kent’s chase to bowl Ben Dawkins for five. The very next ball, to Northeast, flashed through the slip cordon, but Northeast had only made 10 when he was caught and bowled by Procter.

Northants scented blood when Yuzi Chahal bowled Bell-Drummond for 47 with one that nipped back up the slope, but the momentum shifted when Finch reached 50 with a six off Procter over square leg, before mowing Miller for two more maximums in the 33rd.

Benjamin was on 17 when he flicked Guthrie to backward square, but Procter put down a simple chance and Finch edged the next ball for four through slips.

Benjamin cashed in by creaming Chahal for six over midwicket, but their partnership of 96 was broken when Chahal got Finch lbw.

Denly came in and maintained the pressure by hitting Keogh for six over midwicket, before miscuing Chahal over the point boundary, but he was bowled for 17 by Procter.

Ekansh steadied the nerves with an unbeaten 18 from 18 and Benjamin passed 50 with a cut that flew just past Sharma at backward point, before seeing Kent home with a driven two off Miller.

Kent’s Harry Finch said: “They made a really good start and to be honest, I thought in the first ten overs when we bowled, we were sort of looking at a 320 plus sort of pitch. I thought, oh Jesus, it looks like a bit of a belter. And then I think it actually got a bit harder as the ball got softer and Grant came on and bowled a brilliant spell and really tied them down.

“So I think all round that was a brilliant performance. Any run chase is difficult, so to get over the line there pretty comfortably at the end was really pleasing.

“I think they were 210 for three and then almost 210 for six. I mean that over where he (Ekansh) got McSweeney and then Bartlett, that’s massive. You get two guys who are set out going into the last ten, that just makes life so much easier. So yeah, that over was massive from Ekki and hopefully he’ll go from strength to strength in the next one.

“Obviously Benji played very much more an anchor role there and he’s got the ability to play in different ways as have I as well. But the way I saw it, I was like, I’m going to take the game on a bit earlier here. And the thinking behind it was Chahal was going to come back, he had four overs left and I thought, well, while their other guys are on with the wind going that way, a short side, I thought now’s the time to accelerate. It’ll make it easier for the guys at the back end. So that was the thinking behind it.”

Northamptonshire’s Darren Lehmann said: (On losing 7-43 in the last eight overs) “It was not good, was it? They hit seven or eight sixes on the short side, I think they hit 150, we hit 100. And the last 10, they bowled pretty well and we played some dumb cricket. We’re better than that, we’ll talk about that and repair it and make sure we do better than the last 10.

“We thought really this is probably 30 short. If we got 280, they wouldn’t have got it, simple as that, so, the last 8 with the bat cost us.

“At 210 for 3, with 10 to go, you’d have been looking at something up towards 300. Well, 280 was enough. So, we’re 50 short, no, 30 short, sorry. And that’s a great learning curve for us, if we want to be a better one-day side, you’ve got to get positions like that and you actually get 280. And if you bat well, you probably get 290.

“The batters did really well to get us in a good position and it wasn’t easy out there, they bowled quite well. I think the toss was quite important at the end, but we were outplayed today. In the last 10 we stuck in it, though. I like the way we keep fighting. We always keep fighting, but Kent played well, Benjamin played well. I thought Finch was very good for them and we just dropped the catch, little things that we haven’t been doing for a while, so… yeah, we’ll rectify that.”

Picture supplied by Kent Cricket.