Kent face a battle to save their Rothesay County Championship match against Lancashire after a testing day in the field on Tuesday.
Lancashire responded to Kent’s 374 by racing to 639-9 at the close in Blackpool with centuries from Luke Wells, Josh Bohannon and Ashton Turner. They go into the final day with a lead of 261 and will surely declare overnight.
In a first session slightly curtailed by a light shower, Lancashire added 105 runs in 30.5 overs for the loss of nightwatchman Tom Bailey, who had made 25 untroubled runs before he was leg before on the front foot to Joey Evison.
Otherwise, the highlight of the morning was Wells reaching his third first-class century for Lancashire against Kent when he reverse-swept Jack Leaning to the third man boundary.
The first session proved to be merely the prelude to an even more severe assault on the Kent bowling in the next two sessions. After taking 24 balls to get off the mark, Bohannon reached his fifty off a further 78 deliveries with an on-drive off Evison. In the next over Wells lost the ball when he walloped Matt Parkinson for a six over the wall at the South End to bring up his own 150.
But former Lancashire leg-spinner Parkinson struck with his next delivery, when Wells tried to repeat his previous stroke and was well caught by Wes Agar at long-off for 152.
Turner joined Bohannon and the pair put on a further 174 runs either side of tea, with Turner making an immediate impact in his first innings for Lancashire, reaching his hundred off 117 balls with six fours and four sixes
Bohannon had earlier reached his century off 191 balls with a square cut off his old team-mate Parkinson, having hit nine fours and three sixes, but he was eventually caught by Agar off Leaning’s off-spin for 124, having hit ten fours and four sixes in his 210-ball innings.
Matty Hurst was bowled for 21 by Evison, who finished with 3-61 on a day when he had been the pick of the Kent attack.
Eight overs before the close, Turner was caught at long-off by Leaning off Parkinson and Michael Jones fell to the same combination for 41, leaving the leg-spinner with figures 3-188 from 35 overs before Jaydn Denly took two late wickets in an over just before the close.
Kent head coach Adam Hollioake said: “It was a difficult day in the field, that’s for sure. The wicket died down and didn’t have a lot of pace in it.
“We spent the day just defending. We spent our time trying to attack the concentration of the batsmen because the wicket wasn’t offering us much.
“The boys earned their money today. Boring is a compliment on days like today when you have to try and break the batsmen’s concentration and stop them from scoring.
“Joey Evison does that very well, he holds his line and length and he got his rewards.
“We didn’t enough on that pitch having been 270-odd for three. We underscored so it’s no good saying it’s no good to bowl on.
“There’ll be scoreboard pressure tomorrow. They’ll have men around the bat and if they take a couple of wickets, they’ll be all over us, so we definitely have work to do.”
Report from ECB Reporters Network supported by Rothesay
