Ben Coad takes six as Yorkshire overcome Kent

Prolonged Kentish resistance eventually counted for little as Yorkshire's persistent attack mopped up the seven wickets required to secure a 172-run win

Canterbury (final day of four): Yorkshire 210 & 469, Kent 296 & 211 - Yorkshire won by 172 runs

Scorecard

Prolonged Kentish resistance eventually counted for little as Yorkshire’s persistent attack mopped up the seven wickets required to secure a 172-run Specsavers County Championship win over Kent in Canterbury.

Facing an improbable victory target of 384 and after their brave rear-guard action at the start of the day, the hosts did superbly well to take the match into its final session before White Rose seamer Ben Coad mopped up the tail with a season’s best six for 52.

The fourth day started with a stoical fourth-wicket stand between Daniel Bell-Drummond and Fred Klaassen which frustrated the Tykes’ attack throughout the opening session in adding 54 runs inside 34 overs either side of lunch.

Yorkshire finally broke through soon after the resumption when Klassen, the 26-year-old night watchman making his championship debut for Kent, steered one from Duanne Olivier to second slip to end his two-and-a-half hour, 110-ball stay for 13.

Hampered by the loss of Tim Bresnan to a calf injury – the former England seamer slipped over when delivering his first ball of day and limped off after completing only two overs –Yorkshire’s attack continued to chip away to pick up three more wickets in the mid-session.

Interim Kent captain Heino Kuhn, who has one first-class 50 to date this season, went for a seven-ball duck when nicking to second slip after an ugly, low-handed defensive prod.

^{Gary Ballance has hit hundreds in his last three Championship matches}

Bell-Drummond, who offered two chances that were both dropped in the cordon by Lyth, moved past 5,000 first-class career runs during his 170-minute stay and was nine short of a battling 50 when he played across one from Steven Patterson to go lbw.

Then, after being checked out for concussion following a fearsome blow on the helmet from an Olivier bouncer, Kent’s first innings century-maker Ollie Robinson drove a slower ball away-swinger from Ben Coad to Gary Ballance at cover to make it 142 for seven.

Alex Blake and Harry Podmore resisted for 22 overs either side of tea until the introduction of off-spinner Jack Leaning accounted for Blake, leg before when prodding outside the line of an arm-ball.

With 24 overs remaining Yorkshire took the second new ball through Coad and Olivier, but Podmore and Matt Milnes continued Kent’s defiance into the final hour of the match.

Moments later, Coad ran one up the slope to pluck out Podmore’s middle stump for 29, scored in a shade under two hours then, in his next over same bowler had last man Mitch Claydon caught at short leg to secure victory with 15.1 overs to spare.

Coad led the bowling plaudits with six wickets, two go with his two previous five-wicket hauls this summer, and Olivier two for 92 in clinching unbeaten Yorkshire’s second win of the campaign that takes them to second spot in the table. After their second defeat on returning to Division One Kent slip to fifth.   

By Mark Pennell courtesy of the ECB Reporters Network

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