Openers thrive after Calvin Harrison’s legspin delivers slender first-innings lead

ECB Reporters Network27-Jul-2023Nottinghamshire put themselves in a position to dictate the terms of the final day as openers Ben Slater and Haseeb Hameed built on a small first-innings lead to leave their side 210 in front with nine wickets in hand at the close of day three of their LV= Insurance County Championship match against Kent.The pair shared a partnership of 131 – Nottingham’s best this season for the first wicket – before Hameed was out for 45 six overs before the close. Slater’s unbeaten 87 leaves him 13 runs away from a second hundred in the match, with Will Young on 32 from just 19 balls as Nottinghamshire finished on 176 for one.Earlier, although there were solid performances from Harry Finch (73) and Joey Evison (49), Kent ultimately squandered what looked to be a good position in reply to Nottinghamshire’s first-innings 350 by losing their last five wickets for 23 to be 316 all out.Leg-spinner Calvin Harrison finished with a career-best four for 28 – albeit in only his seventh first-class match – and Brett Hutton kept his nose in front as Division One’s leading wicket-taker with three for 76, despite Jamie Porter taking 10 in the match for Essex against Hampshire.Kent, whose relegation worries have increased with Middlesex’s win at Edgbaston, had been well placed at 102 for two when rain forced them off at tea on Wednesday, but their morning began badly when Ben Geddes, the loanee from Surrey who had played well for his 36, was out in the second over, caught by Harrison at second slip chasing a widish ball from Hutton that found some extra bounce.A recovery followed. After hours of rain through the previous evening, Nottinghamshire might have anticipated a period of renewed liveliness from a pitch that had given the seamers plenty of encouragement over the first two days but neither Hutton nor Dane Paterson could control the scoreboard in their opening spells.Finch and Jack Leaning settled in nicely and it took a strange dismissal shortly before lunch to deny the fourth-wicket pair a substantial partnership.It came after Harrison entered the attack for the first time and a disbelieving Leaning was out to his second ball, getting a thin edge that then freakishly ballooned high into the air, off wicketkeeper Tom Moores’s right pad. It flew over the head of Mullaney at slip but the Nottinghamshire skipper had time to catch it on its way down.Nonetheless, breakthroughs were rare as Kent, for all their injury woes, steadily eroded the advantage Nottinghamshire had seemed to have established with what looked like a good score on a relatively hazardous pitch.Kent’s assessment at Wednesday’s close that 350 might be a par score had seemed like wishful thinking but Nottinghamshire, missing Luke Fletcher from their attack after he limped off the field on day two, found it difficult to create many opportunities.Alex Blake, in his first red-ball innings for four years, fell to the fifth delivery with the second new ball as Hutton raised his tally for the season to 48 – his best return in a first-class season – but as Finch and Evison added 75 in 18 overs it seemed Kent’s confidence had not been misplaced after all.Yet after Paterson, having bowled 17 unsuccessful overs from the pavilion end, switched to the Radcliffe Road end and Harrison returned for a second spell, everything changed rapidly.First Finch, who had gone past fifty for the third time in as many matches since Kent’s injury crisis opened up a place in the senior side, made a rare misjudgement and paid the price, offering no shot as Paterson brought one back to clip his off stump.The South African followed up by bowling Evison in his next over with another nip-backer, good enough to do the job even though Evison did attempt to keep it out.Harrison then coaxed a miscue to deep extra cover from Matt Quinn and from 293 for five, Kent were suddenly 308 for eight. A couple of overs more and they were all out and conceding a 34-run deficit, the leg-spinner finishing the innings with two in two balls as Arshdeep holed out to deep midwicket and Arafat Bhuiyan offered him a rigid front pad.By the evening, largely played out in sunshine, the pitch looked to have settled down and Slater and Hameed exposed the limitations of the Kent attack, which lacks a front-line spinner, proceeding largely untroubled, certainly in terms of chances offered, through almost 35 overs before Hameed aimed an injudicious slash at a shortish wide delivery from Arshdeep Singh and was caught behind.Kent’s over-rate was pedestrian and could yet do them damage at a stage in the season when bonus points become critical. They have a chance to improve things on day four but as things stand they are at minus three. If that were to translate to points docked, even a draw here would leave them in the relegation places.