Kent v Hampshire, LV= CC Match History

Last year’s home match against Hampshire was at Tunbridge Wells. Those who were present will recall the appalling weather resulting in just 170 overs out of a possible minimum 384 being bowled. Despite both sides forfeiting an innings, the result, inevitably was a draw. The return match at the Aegas Bowl was also a draw but featured an opening stand of 252 between Sam Northeast (140) and Rob Key (119).

Kent’s 467 first innings score, was however, not enough the clinch victory, with the host’s captain Jimmy Adams and last man Danny Briggs successfully keeping out Kent’s bowlers for the final twenty overs. The boot was on the other foot a few weeks ago down in Hampshire when, after a valiant attempt to score 342 runs for a notable victory, Kent settled for an honourable draw with our numbers nine and ten batsmen,Calum Haggett and Adam Riley, safely negotiating the final 21 overs.

This match will be the 205th Kent v Hampshire fixture and the sixty-third home game played at Canterbury, most of which were part of the traditional Canterbury Week. The first game was played in 1867. Kent has been victorious on 85 occasions, with our visitors winning 43 times. 75 games have been drawn and one tied.

Eight years ago, in a high scoring and exciting match here at Canterbury, Australian legend Shane Warne scored his maiden first-class hundred in Hampshire’s first innings whilst in their second there were hundreds from Simon Katich and Kevin Peterson. In an exciting climax Kent held on for a draw having scored 447-9 in their second innings, a record fourth innings score for Kent. 1541 runs were scored in the match, the highest ever between the two counties. In 2002, both sides had high first innings scores. Kent declared on 577-7 in 144 overs with Robert Key scoring 160 whilst David Fulton missed out on a century by just 2 runs. Their opening partnership of 266 was a record for matches between these two sides but it was exceeded in 2006 when the same Kent pair hadan undefeated opening partnership of 281. Hampshire’s score of 671 in that 2002 match (with one batsman absent hurt) is their highest innings total against us and it included an undefeated 272 by Jonathan Crawley and 117 by Zimbabwean Neil Johnson. It is also the highest score recorded against Kent in the County Championship.

Kent’s record highest score of 610 at Bournemouth in the 1906 Championship winning season still stands whilst our lowest was 32 at Southampton in 1952. That represented something of a recovery as they were 18-9 at one point! Hampshire suffered a similar indignity at Maidstone in 1967 when they were dismissed for 31 in their second innings. Kent batsmen have recorded four double hundreds with the highest score of 257 being achieved twice: by Arthur Fagg in 1936 and Mark Benson in 1991. On both occasions it was at Southampton.

Frank Woolley leads Kent’s run scorers with 3,625, a figure which is comfortably eclipsed by C.P. Mead for Hampshire with 4,369. Kent batsmen have recorded 131 hundreds with Woolley and Hardinge each scoring ten, whilst for Hampshire there have been 88 with C.P. Mead scoring 15 of them. “Tich” Freeman has been the most prolific wicket-taker for the County with a total of 226 which included five in an innings on no less than 22 occasions. Colin Blythe took ten in a match on seven occasions with a best performance of 15-76 at Tonbridge in 1904 which included a first innings return of 9-30. Derek Shackleton has been Hampshire’s most successful bowler with 210 wickets including five in an innings 14 times and ten in a match on 3 occasions.

In a memorable match at Canterbury in 1996 Dean Headley and Martin McCague both took hat tricks: Headley in the first innings and McCague in the second in an astonishing spell during which Hampshire lost nine wickets for seven runs.

David Robertson