Junior Journo: Alex’s Match Report
On Sunday at The Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence, Kent Cricket welcomed Alex, our final Metro Bank One Day Cup Junior Journo. He was there to witness our win over Essex first-hand.
He got to interview his favourite player, Joe Denly, before the match – and was then on the ground to interview members of the Kent squad before & after play.
Alex’s other task for the day was to give us a Junior Journo match report. Here is his write-up of the Battle of the Bridge:
Kent completed a 60 run victory to keep their hopes of making the quarter finals of the Metro One Day Cup very much alive. The standout performer, once again, was Jack Leaning who hit 137* and picked up two wickets, finding himself on a hat trick in the process.
Having won the toss, and elected to bat, Kent made a steady start as a returning Joe Denly and Ben Compton opened the innings. Compton fell for a well made 65 leaving Kent 130-2 at the mid way point. A mini collapse was halted by a sixth wicket partnership between action man Jaydn and man of the moment, Jack Leaning. Once Jaydn Denly (37) departed Kent lost the next three wickets for 5 runs, leaving Leaning as the main hope to try and post a competitive target. And that is just what he did, sharing an unbeaten partnership of 69 with Jas Singh. Singh may have only scored 2 of these runs, but he did what the others failed to do, and that was stay with super Jack! Leaning took a real liking to the Essex attack, taking 26 from the final over. A fantastic innings that had everyone on their feet applauding as Kent closed on 287-8.
In reply, Essex started brightly keeping up with the required run rate in the early overs. However, Kent kept chipping away at the wickets. Khushi made 50 before being caught brilliantly at deep mid wicket by a diving Jaydn Denly (who else!). The array of spinners for Kent picked up 7 of the wickets to fall and crucially kept it tight through the middle overs. Buttlemen made a defiant half century but ran out of partners as Kent completed a comfortable victory.
A day to remember for Jack Leaning who hit his highest List A one day score and for the Denly family as it was the first time in Kent’s history that an uncle and nephew appeared in the same side. Next up is Hampshire away on the Isle of Wight on Tuesday, Come on you Spitfires!
By Alex
Alex & other juniors in attendance all collected the signatures of their Kent heroes, on FREE autograph sheets, after the end of the match.
The LV= Insurance County Championship comes to a head next month
We welcome Nottinghamshire to The Spitfire Ground in one of three first-class fixtures in September:
