Glamorgan win despite Stevens record haul
Darren Stevens completed his best ever season with the ball but it was not enough to prevent Kent’s first home defeat of the Championship season as Glamorgan won by five wickets at The Spitfire Ground.
The 41-year-old ended the season with 63 wickets in the competition at an average of 18.08 but the hosts were undone as the Welsh side removed the Kent tail early on the third day.
Glamorgan made the best of starts to their pursuit of a 189-run chase when openers Nick Selman and Connor Brown posted 96 – the best partnership for any wicket in the match.
Brown finally went for 33 to Haggett, caught at point at the second attempt by substitute fielder Ollie Robinson, then, with his score on 70, Selman flayed at a wide one from Stevens to be caught behind for his 62nd first-class wicket and a career-best season’s haul.
With his next ball 41-year-old Stevens pegged back Kiran Carlson’s off stump via an inside edge then, just before tea, Jack Murphy flayed a wide one to Zak Crawley in the gully to give the Kent veteran five wickets in the match.
Only 10 balls after tea Chris Cooke drove a return catch to left-arm spinner Imran Qayyum, so it was left to David Lloyd, who scored a pugnacious unbeaten 35, to see his side over the win line with a slog-swept six off Qayyum.
Admittedly, conditions on day three fell with outrageous good fortune in Glamorgan’s favour – they bowled on a steamy overcast morning and batted under blue skies all afternoon – but for Kent it was pretty much all gloom and doom as their last day’s action of the season ended with a second championship defeat of the summer and their first red-ball defeat to Glamorgan on home soil since 1992.
At the start of the day, Kent resumed on their overnight score of 98 for six – a lead of 171 – and with top-scorer Adam Rouse, the county’s understudy wicketkeeper and substitute for Sam Billings, at the crease.
But home hopes of setting a testing 200-plus target were soon quashed as Kent lost their last four wickets for nine runs in the space of 26 balls.
Haggett played outside an off-cutter that darted down the Canterbury slope to pluck out middle stump and give Hogan five wickets.
Rouse’s resistance ended for 44 when he toe-ended an attempted pull against Lucas Carey to mid-on, then, five balls later, Carey struck again by having Kent debutant Grant Stewart caught in the cordon by former Kent 2nd XI batsman Nick Selman.
Hogan polished it off by having last man Imran Qayyum caught behind for a first-ball duck to finish with six for 43 and career-best match figures of 10 for 87.