James Anderson denied win by Kent's tail in first game as captain

Times

25-06-2025

This season, perhaps, it could only be Lancashire. After seeming on the brink of their first Championship victory of 2025, James Anderson's side had to settle for a draw against Kent at Blackpool where Grant Stewart's gloriously violent 130 transformed the game.
Such an outcome seemed the stuff of fantasy just before three o'clock when Harry Finch had walked off Stanley Park after making a four-ball nought and the visiting team were 116 for seven, still 149 runs in arrears. Then it seemed that Anderson was about to lead his side to an innings victory in the 42-year-old's first venture into captaincy.
But only 19 wickets had fallen in the first three days and Stewart now joined the splendidly gutsy Joey Evison with the task of batting for a couple of hours or so on what was still a true surface.
They succeeded in thrilling fashion, Stewart whacking Mitchell Stanley for three successive sixes just after tea and reaching his second hundred of the season off 79 balls, with nine fours and eight maximums.
Anderson had only bowled four overs until just before the second new ball became available but he returned to have Stewart caught at cover by Tom Bailey to revive his side's hopes. However, Wes Agar came out to join Evison and the pair had added a further 30 runs by the time the players shook hands.
At that point, Kent were 63 runs ahead, Evison was 77 not out and only a handful of overs remained in the day.
For Kent and their head coach, Adam Hollioake, the draw ends a dismal run in which they had lost four successive games, two of them by an innings. However, they could be forgiven if they regarded this result as a quasi-victory.
Certainly the outcome will have come as a disappointment to the Australian off spinner, Chris Green, whose four wickets for 104 in 38 overs had put the skids under Kent. His captain, however, was in more sanguine mood.
'I think we played some great cricket throughout the week,' Anderson said. 'But their lower order played really well today. We knew the new ball was coming but we only had a short time with it to get those last couple of wickets.
'Obviously, the lads are disappointed not to get the win. But I just think the way we approached this week felt different to the rest of the season. And I feel if we keep playing like that, we're going to win games.'
Edgbaston (final day of four): Warwickshire (11pts) drew with Somerset (14)
A game that was slowly expiring 26 minutes after tea suddenly sparked into life, if only for a further 15 overs, when first Tom Latham returned a well-taken low catch to Craig Overton for 52 and the new batsman, Jacob Bethell, was needlessly roused into a hook by Migael Pretorius's bouncers six overs later, skying a top edge to mid-wicket for 12.
Set 377 at 5.46 per over, a target never remotely on, Warwickshire were now 131 for four with 23.2 overs to come. They had lost both openers in the first 31 balls, as Jack Leach's left-arm spin shared the new ball with Matt Henry's pace, but Latham and Sam Hain had apparently stifled all Somerset hopes of a fourth championship success on the bounce in an unflustered 98-run stand.
As it was Hain, facing 157 balls for an eventual unbeaten 68, needed Ed Barnard to stay with him until the draw was eventually conceded at 5.43pm. At times a ring of ten men surrounded the bat but, on a slow pitch, alarms were few. Somerset's tactics faltered badly in the morning as they tried to establish a target. Surrendering two early wickets after a busy start, they lost a further three later after unduly assiduous retrenchment. The Australian Corey Rocchiccioli, bowling impressive off spin, helped the confusion with five for 67 on his Warwickshire debut as an overseas player, signed for the four rounds of Kookaburra-ball games.
In a more unusual scene on the county circuit, Jonny Bairstow bowled only his second-ever over — 11 years after his first — in Yorkshire's County Championship fixture against Nottinghamshire. The Yorkshire captain, who is the county's first-choice wicketkeeper, handed the gloves to Finlay Bean for the final over of the day but had little to show for his efforts, finishing with figures of 0-6.
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