Surrey demolish Kent to notch first win of the season

Surrey 543 for 7 dec (Sibley 150, Lawrence 112, Burns 69, Smith 58, Parkinson 5-177) beat Kent 244 and 262 (Evison 53, Worrall 4-31, Steel 3-38) by an innings and 37 runs

Surrey have beaten Kent by an innings and 37 runs in the Vitality County Championship at Canterbury.

The reigning champions dismissed the hosts for 262 in their second innings, with Dan Worrall taking 4 for 31 and Cameron Steel, claiming 3 for 38. Steel remains the leading wicket-taker in the country this season, with 20 after three matches.

Joey Evison made 53 and Matt Parkinson hit his highest first-class score of 39. But after a dogged rearguard action that saw them through the morning session, Kent subsided midway through the afternoon.

The hosts were 120 for 5 overnight, still 179 runs in arrears, and their slim hopes of batting out the day were dealt a near-fatal blow when Ben Compton was out in the fifth over of the morning. Compton, unbeaten on eight overnight, chased a Worrall delivery that veered away and was caught behind.

The home crowd, however, were pleasantly surprised by the way Evison and Parkinson survived the rest of the morning. Parkinson, promoted up the order to number eight, had spent the winter working on his batting as part of a concerted effort to shore up Kent’s lower order. Although there were a few alarms, by lunch Kent had reached 203 for six at lunch and the impossible now seemed merely improbable.

Evison, however, fell to Tom Lawes in the afternoon’s third over. He cut Lawes for fours off successive boundaries to reach his half-century but then edged him behind.

With Evison gone, Kent crumbled. George Garrett was lbw to Steel for four and Jas Singh went for a duck when Jamie Smith took a brilliant catch at short leg off the same bowler.

Number 11 Arafat Bhuiyan had some fun with the new ball, flicking three consecutive balls from Kemar Roach for a six and two fours on his way to his highest championship score of 22 not out, making him the fourth Kent tail-ender to reach that personal landmark in this match, after Garrett and Singh hit their career-best scores in the first innings.

This merely delayed Surrey’s celebrations, however, and an emphatic victory was sealed when Smith took another exceptional close catch to snare Parkinson off Kemar Roach. Surrey take 24 points and Kent two.