Kent v Lancashire, Rothesay County Championship, Day One

Lancashire 161 (2pts) all out vs Kent 151-7 (3pts) Kent v Lancashire Day One.

Report by Fred Atkins for the ECB Reporters Network, supported by Rothesay.

It was a day to forget for the batters on both sides of Kent’s Rothesay County Championship with Lancashire at Canterbury, with 17 wickets falling.

Promotion hopefuls Kent skittled Lancashire for 161, with Khaled Ahmed taking five for 42 and Matt Milnes four for 28, but the visitors’ opening stand of 81 turned into by the far the biggest partnership of the match.

Michael Jones was their top scorer with 44 and Keaton Jennings made 30, but they suffered a catastrophic afternoon session, losing all ten wickets for 88 runs.

Kent then suffered an almost equally cataclysmic evening, lurching to 151 for seven at stumps: James Anderson took three for 25, but Zak Crawley’s unbeaten 68 got them close to parity.

Lancashire’s Michael Jones said: “I think that Keats and I had a decent partnership at the top to get us into a solid position at lunch, but ultimately the wicket was probably slow to start with, so it meant that if we did nick one or whatever, it generally went down.

“It was probably tough to score, but arguably it got tougher to bat on as the day went on because it started carrying more. The sideways movement that was there was a little bit faster, so I think it was arguably a little bit tougher. Even though we would have bowled if we won the toss, I think it was actually a decent toss to lose would be the way things have played out. If you said to me (at lunch) there would have been 17 wickets at that stage, I would have been a little bit surprised.

"I don't know what we were, maybe 80 or something for none. I think obviously we would have liked a few more runs.

“We could have scrapped and maybe got 250 there and taken a lead of 50-plus into the second innings. It would have given us a real hand-up in the game, but obviously that's not the case. Now we probably just need to really scrap in the morning, keep it down to a minimum, and see what we can get in the second innings and bowl them out.”