In the first of Kent’s two days of home first team cricket away from Canterbury, the Spitfires hosted Durham in the Metro One Day Cup at Beckenham.
Both teams were captained by wicketkeepers batting at five (according to the scorecard) with the visitors’ stumper being local boy, and former Kent supporters’ favourite, Ollie Robinson.
When he, and the Spitfires’ captain Harry Finch, went out to the middle, it was the hosts’ skipper who won the toss and elected to bat first. Sadly, that was as good as it got for the home team.
Normally, the pitch at Beckenham is a batting paradise, known in cricket parlance as ‘a road’. If this track fitted that description, there must have been a lot of potholes in it when Durham bowler Mitch Killeen took the new ball from the Beckenham End.
Jaydn Denly pulled him straight into the hands of Scott Borthwick at midwicket before Joey Benjamin and Chris Benjamin were both caught at backward point by George Drissell for one run between them, reducing the Spitfires to 25 for 3.
Finch came in and joined Ben Compton and they started a reparation job with Killeen bowl straight through ending with 3 for 15 from ten overs which included four maidens. Although a recovery was required, Finch, in particular, was probably too cautious.
Paul Coughlin replaced Killeen and also bowled well until a strain meant he had to come out of the attack. By that time he had removed Finch, also caught at backward point by Borthwick after scoring 28 from 71 balls.
Ekansh Singh came in and he was like a breath of fresh air when hitting George Dressell for consecutive on drives for four, all along the ground. When Compton fell for 55, Singh was joined by previously out of form Jack Leaning. Singh fell for an enterprising 45 from 44 balls but Leaning continued to finish on 68 not out from 50 deliveries.
Even while he was batting, Kent still managed to lose another wicket caught at backward point when Fred Klaassen didn’t get over a cut and it went to Borthwick off Will Rhodes.
238 for 8 looked well below par, and so it proved to be. Despite what was stated on the scorecard, Robinson opened with Kent nemesis Emilio ‘Enola’ Gay. Suddenly, the demons in the pitch from the Beckenham End disappeared as both opening bowlers sprayed it around.
Robinson was annoyed with himself when playing on off Klaassen for 26 but Gay continued to enjoy himself. Mikey Cohen bowled ten wides in his eight overs and spinners Mo Rizvi and Matt Parkinson bowled some snorters interspersed with half trackers.
Parkinson also committed the cardinal sin for a slow bowler of bowling a no-ball. That allowed a free hit off the following delivery and Gay launched it into the crowd.
To his credit, Parkinson did pick up a couple of wickets, both LBW, but after a chance was missed by Singh off his bowling, he went for twenty-nine of his next two overs.
Coincidently, both Kent and Durham reached the two hundred mark with a wide, the Spitfires in the 47th over, and the visitors in just the 33rd. Gay completed his century, finishing on 119 not out, and Colin Ackerman 38 not out as Durham won by seven wickets with ten overs and four balls to spare.
Supporters of the Spitfires had hoped for some joy in this tournament having lost only three players to the franchise abomination which has decimated some of the other counties. However, results so far suggest they may have to re-evaluate those dreams.
Kent travel to Rugby on Wednesday to take on Warwickshire before returning to Beckenham next Sunday with Lancashire the visitors.
Durham’s Emilio Gay said: “I’ve had some success in Canterbury against this team and it’s nice to do it against the same team but on a different side of Kent so to speak.
“I think we’d have had a bowl (if they’d won the toss.) From the discussions I think we fancied a chase. We’ve got a pretty experienced batting line-up with Bedders back in, Colin, Borthwick and Ollie Robinson as well so we’ve got plenty of experience.
“So I think we fancied a chase, it looked a good wicket and I think we just backed ourselves. If it was going to do a bit it was going to do it early and it played out that way. I think Mitch Killeen is someone with remarkable consistency at such a young age and I think in the powerplay as well, it’s such a long time it’s more comparable with the red ball format than T20 cricket.
“You’re using your skills, hitting the top of off stump and looking for nip and swing and he did that and the dot balls there created those wickets. It wasn’t just a case of taking three wickets in the powerplay, 35 for three, our tightness and compact bowling definitely both those wickets and from there I think we were always going to struggle to put on a competitive score.
“I know they had a couple of partnerships but we were always going to back ourselves from there.
“To be fair I’ve seen enough cricket and funny things can happen but with the weather and the wicket, Kent have got such a lucky thing that they’ve got this as an outground because this is as good of a wicket as most first-class grounds , so to have this as a second option is remarkable.
“So I think to be honest we always backed ourselves and yeah, we fancied the chance.
“A little bit of a struggle I’ve ha coming back into this format is you get wrapped up into T20 mode a little bit. You can see that white ball and get a bit ahead of yourself. The key was that me or Robbo or Ackers, that someone was there towards he end then we were going twin that game.
“I wanted to make sure that was me and runs came. Naturally I score fairly quickly so I knew if I stayed in we’d have a good chance and that’s what happened.
“It’s an important 100 because were chasing the win but it’s hard to say (how it compares to his other hundreds). In the context of the game it’s got to be up there but I’m just happy to contribute.
“There’s no point scoring hundreds really if you’re not winning the game so I had 99 against Surrey a couple of weeks ago and we lost that. If I’d got a hundred there and we’d won that it would probably have been my best one but this has kind of put us in a great position so it’s probably up there, for sure.”
Kent’s Jack Leaning said: “I thought the way they bowled at the start of the innings was pretty good. I think if we’re being honest with ourselves we let them bowl quite a bit. I know we lost a couple of wickets early but I think one-day cricket is about how you can put pressure back on the opposition after soaking up a little bit of their good bowling and I think if we’re being honest with ourselves we probably just fell on the wrong side of that today and probably let them bowl at us for a little bit to long.
“Luckily we got up to a decent enough score but I think we knew were always short on that wicket. It’s tough, it’s a balance. If one of them (Compton or Finch) plays a big shot and gets out, everyone says ‘why didn’t you take it a little bit deeper?’
“But I think that’s the nature of one-day cricket. I think they both, on another day, seeing how easily they chased the score in the end, they maybe thought it was a bit of a lower-scoring wicket, but actually we probably needed to go a little bit harder to try and get up to 270 280 and almost risk getting bowled out for 160, 170 in the process.
“That’s one of those things that we learn and the pitch probably did get better throughout the day, which obviously helped them, but look, it’s just one of those things.
“I feel in a really good place with my white-ball game at the moment. I’ve played pretty nicely all season in that format. Red ball’s obviously been a bit of a different story this year but white ball I feel really confident I can go out there, score freely and score the way I want to put pressure back on the opposition.
(On his late flourish.) “It was quite good fun in the middle. I think we thought we’d got up to a score where if we bowled well and took early wickets there was a chance we’d win the game, but as soon as they were only one down coming out of the powerplay with two men set it was always going to be a bit of an uphill challenge from there really.
“I think Emilio Gay played beautifully, he just gave us a real lesson a perfect tempo. If everything goes right at the start of your one-day innings. I don’t think he took too many risks, he just played shots on a decent enough wicket and the outfield’s so quick that if you beat cover or extra cover you know you’re always going to get value for your shots, so I thought he played really well today.”