Kent v Lancashire: Key hits century as Kent pile on runs
Tuesday 1st September 2015
Rob Key’s 53rd first-class century helped Kent prosper on the opening day of their LV= County Championship clash with Division 2 leaders Lancashire in Canterbury.
On an overcast day when 26 overs were lost to rain and bad light, Kent’s top-order flourished against the Red Rose attack to post 235 for three from only 70 overs’ play.
Key hit a season’s best 113 and featured in stands worth 72 with Daniel Bell-Drummond (37) and then 149 inside 35 overs with Joe Denly (65) on a generally overcast day when Lancashire clearly expected ball to dominate bat.
Only 28 balls were bowled during a staccato opening session before the players, with Kent on seven without loss, fled for cover from a heavy shower for an early lunch just after noon.
Key might have gone for three, when Alviro Petersen downed a slip catch off Glen Chapple with the home total on 23 without loss, yet Kent’s only casualty of the opening two sessions came after 28.3 overs.
With his score on 37 after 103 minutes at the crease Bell-Drummond, walking across his stumps and aiming to leg, was trapped lbw by a Tom Bailey off-cutter to make it 72 for one.
Key scored only four boundaries in his patient 116-ball 50, two of which came with straight drives in successive overs from left-arm spinner Simon Kerrigan, as Key and Denly set out their stall to bat time.
Denly reached his 79-ball 50 with a sweetly-timed leg-side clip off Chapple for his eighth boundary, while Key reached three figures with an all-run four after straight driving the same bowler. The ton came off 179 balls and included 11 fours, 10 of them boundaries.
It was the 36-year-old right-hander’s 24th first-class hundred on the ground for Kent, where he is comfortably the county’s leading run-scorer with almost 8,000 runs to his name.
Bad light took the players off for a fourth time shortly before 5pm and Key and Denly both perished soon after the resumptions half-an hour later. Denly, playing late to the skiddy pace of Jordan Clark, departed lbw for 65 then Key, after 201 balls, fenced at a Clark lifter and spooned a comfortable catch to gully off the shoulder of the bat.
Lancashire might have finished the day on an even bigger high had Karl Brown held onto a sharp slip chance offered by home skipper Sam Northeast when on four, but the opportunity, off the bowling of Clark, went to ground allowing Northeast and night watchman James Tredwell to bat out the three remaining overs through to stumps.