Glamorgan thrashed Kent by an innings and 161 runs at Canterbury to pick up their first win of the season in the Rothesay County Championship.

Asitha Fernando took three for 18 and Timm van der Gugten 3 for 33 as the Welsh side dismissed Kent for 176 in their second innings, having enforced the follow on after rolling them over for 212 first time out.

Chris Benjamin’s first innings score of 94 not out was the only positive for the hosts in a game the visitors dominated throughout, winning with a day and 29 overs to spare.

Home expectations were hardly high when Kent resumed on their overnight score of 156 for 8 overnight, with Benjamin unbeaten on 68, but for the first hour at least they showed some doggedness.

George Garrett was on 11 when he edged Fernando to second slip but Kiran Carlson couldn’t take a head-high catch and Garrett made a sensible-looking 35 before he finally edged Zain ul-Hassan and was caught behind.

That left Benjamin’s hopes of a maiden Kent century relying on Kashif Ali and although he trusted his partner enough to rotate the strike, Kashif managed just three before he was bowled by ul-Hassan.

Glamorgan unsurprisingly enforced the follow on, but Harry Finch and Ben Compton looked comfortable enough till lunch, at which point it was 19-0.

Any thoughts that Kent might drag things into a fourth day, however, disintegrated during the afternoon session. Fernando got Ben Compton lbw for 19 and Daniel Bell-Drummond fell to Gorvin for five after a breathtaking one-handed grab by Kiran Carlson.

Finch nicked Fernando behind for 28 and the Sri Lankan then had Leaning caught behind for a four-ball duck.

Although 18-year-old debutant Ekansh Singh avoided a pair, he fell for eight, caught behind off van der Gugten, and the Dutch international then bowled Benjamin for seven and got Grant Stewart lbw for 16, from nine balls.

Tawanda Muyeye was lbw to James Harris for 41 and by this stage the only jeopardy was whether or not Glamorgan would manage to retrieve the over rate. This explained why the celebrations were so muted when Matt Parkinson was caught and bowled by Ben Kellaway for four: a number of fans didn’t realise he was out until he walked off.

Kashif went down swinging, heaving Kiran Carlson for six over the Colin Cowdrey Stand and then pulling another one into a floodlight pylon. He hit a third six over cow corner but Glamorgan’s biggest ever victory over Kent was secured when he pulled Kellaway to Govin and was caught on the midwicket boundary.

Glamorgan’s Timm van der Gugten said: “We probably didn’t think it was going to happen that quickly but we’re very happy that it did and yeah, I think it was just a pretty complete performance from the team which was nice.

“I was just saying upstairs I think it’s one of the biggest wins Ive had in my career, anywhere I’ve played, so it’s very nice to be a part of. It was obviously set up by the batters on days one and two and as a collective I thought we bowled really well. We kept it quite simple, kept the stumps in play, kind of stifled their runs and took wickets when we could.

“I think we all bowled really well to be honest, probably the issue we’ve had in the first few games this year is that we’ve bowled well in patches and haven’t been able to continue throughout the innings but I think we did well in both.

“We’ll be the first to say that we were below par in those first three games. After that week off I think we’ve come back and we’ve kind of shown how we want to play and yeah, as boring as it is we’ve just done the basics well for a bit longer and it’s got us into better positions in the game.

(On Marnus Labuschagne’s arrival.) “He’ll obviously bring another energy with him so that’ll be quite nice. He’s already been on facetime this afternoon and he arrives tomorrow morning so he’s obviously very keen to get involved like he always is. It’ll be nice to have him around the group.”

Kent’s Adam Hollioake said: “Obviously we’re disappointed with the result and probably more than anybody else is because we’re the ones responsible for it. We acknowledge that that wasn’t good enough the performance wasn’t good enough, the result obviously looks bad as well so we just acknowledge that we have to do better.

“We’ve had a pretty good debrief and some home truths were spoken about. When we set out at the start of the year we said that whatever we did we were going to try to put up some fight and I don’t think we did that very well in this game but we’ll now put it behind us and move on to the next game. There’s no point in dwelling on it. We didn’t bowl well on the first day and that sort of set the tone for the rest of the game so we’ll try and put that right.

“One thing I said to them was that I don’t want it to go like last year. I wasn’t here last year but I heard about it so we’re not just going to start sulking and feeling sorry for ourselves. We’re going to keep working hard.

(Was he shocked?) “Absolutely, I didn’t see it coming at all. Honestly we didn’t play very well in the first half of the Middlesex game but we fought back really hard in that game and took it to the last over so there was nothing to suggest that this was going to happen. The wicket played well, we just played terribly. Let’s just hope that it’s just a one off and we can get it back but it was very disappointing.

“We don’t just drop people after one bad performance. We’re human beings, you don’t just get sacked after one bad day at work, do you? These guys are all good cricketers, a couple of them had bad days and we’ll have to look at why that is. It’s not a case of getting rid of them, I think that’s a soft way as a coach.

“Nathan Gilchrist looks like he might be fit for Gloucestershire and if he is we’ll have two bowlers from the four we played against Northamptonshire in the first game. We had one in this game. We’re never going to get Jas back because he’s out for the summer, Keith Dudgdeon’s gone so the best we can hope for is two of the four.

“We’ve just got to keep evolving and try to get better. We’re professional athletes and we’ve got a duty to our employers. Our employers are the fans and members so we’ve got a duty to them to find a way of putting it right so no excuses. I’ve got find a way to get us winning games without those two guys. There’s no point in crying in your cornflakes about it, we’ve just got to get on with it.”

Picture supplied by Nick Dillam.