Kent’s resistance on the final day of their Vitality County Championship at Canterbury lasted for three hours on Monday.
Surrey eventually ran out winners by an innings and 37 runs as Kent suffered their first defeat of the season.
The reigning champions dismissed the hosts for 262 in their second innings, with Dan Worrall taking 4-31 and Cameron Steel claiming 3-38. Steel remains the leading wicket taker in the country this season, with 20 after three matches.
Joey Evison made 53 and Matt Parkinson hit his highest first-class score of 39, but after a dogged rearguard action that saw them through the morning session, it was only a matter of time after the former departed shortly after lunch.
The hosts were 120-5 overnight, still 179 runs in arrears, and their slim hopes of batting out the day were dealt a near fatal blow when Ben Compton was out in the fifth over of the morning. Compton, unbeaten on eight overnight, chased a Worrall delivery that veered away and was caught behind for 17.
The home crowd, however, were pleasantly surprised by the way Evison and Parkinson survived the rest of the morning. Parkinson, promoted up the order to number eight, had spent the winter working on his batting as part of a concerted effort to shore up Kent’s lower order and Kent reached 203-6 at lunch.
Evison, however, fell to Tom Lawes in the afternoon’s third over. He cut Lawes for fours off successive boundaries to reach his half-century but then edged him behind.
With Evison gone, Kent crumbled. George Garrett was lbw to Steel for four and Jas Singh went for a duck when Jamie Smith took a brilliant catch at short leg off the same bowler.
Number 11 Arafat Bhuiyan had some fun with the new ball, flicking three consecutive balls from Kemar Roach for a six and two fours on his way to his highest championship score of 22 not out, making him the fourth Kent tail-ender to reach that personal landmark in this match, after Garrett and Singh hit their career-best scores in the first innings.
This merely delayed Surrey’s celebrations, however, and an emphatic victory was sealed when Smith took another exceptional close catch to snare Parkinson off Kemar Roach.
Kent captain Daniel Bell-Drummond said: “The lads fought really well throughout the day. Obviously, it wasn’t meant to be but Parkinson played well and Evison kept his fine form going so there were some silver linings in what was a quite disappointing week. That’s one thing this team will, well keep fighting to the end.
“Unfortunately the loss happened in the previous three days, which made it unlikely we were going to get through this day but like I say, I’m proud of the guys’ fight. I think looking back we probably left a few runs out there in that first innings. It was a decent toss to win from Surrey’s point of view but we would have liked more runs and that would have set up the game completely differently.
“But they showed their class. Worrall’s bowled well all game and it wasn’t meant to be. We need to look at ourselves as a group and come back stronger. It’s been a tricky start. We got two draws first up and then lost this.”
