A regal 170 from Zak Crawley helped Kent to 342 for seven on day three of their LV= Insurance County Championship game with Essex at Canterbury, a deficit of 109.
The England man made his highest ever score for Kent, producing an innings of style and brutality as the hosts avoided following on, despite four for 141 from Simon Harmer.
Earlier Nick Browne hit 159 before Essex declared on 451 for five. Tom Westley made 148 and Michael Pepper was unbeaten on 52, but with 118 overs lost to the weather on days one and two and the forecast for Sunday looking bleak, the draw now looks the most likely outcome.
For the first time in the match the Spitfire Ground was bathed in sunshine when play began and Essex immediately went on the attack.
Westley drove the first ball of the day through the covers for four but he subsequently perished to an astounding piece of fielding by Daniel Bell-Drummond.
When he hooked Conor McKerr to the square leg boundary it looked almost certain to be a six, but Bell-Drummond managed to grab the ball in mid-air and flick it back over to the rope to Ben Compton. It was a moment of that rivalled Jordan Cox’s miraculous leap in the 2021 Vitality Blast final, the difference being that it wasn’t filmed and only a few hundred people in the ground were lucky enough to witness it.
A mini-collapse ensued as Wes Agar had Paul Walter caught behind for eight, before McKerr took a sharp return catch to get Matt Critchley for one, but Blast mode quickly resumed, with Pepper ramping McKerr for six and Browne driving Jack Leaning through the covers to pass 150.
Leaning eventually had Browne caught on the long off boundary by Jordan Cox, but Essex declared as soon as they’d secured the fifth bonus point.
Openers Crawley and Ben Compton moved cautiously to 13 without loss at lunch, after which the former launched an aggressive counter-attack, driving, cutting and even reverse-sweeping his way to his fifth red-ball century for Kent and his first since his 105 against Hampshire in September 2020.
He smashed Harmer back over his head for six to pass 50 and pulled the same bowler through mid-wicket to get to three figures, but an opening stand of 162 ended Harmer bowled Compton for 46 with a ball that trickled off the foot of his bat before hitting the stumps.
Harmer nearly had Crawley when he was on 130, but Browne put him down at short leg. Harmer did trap Bell-Drummond lbw for 23 with the final ball of the afternoon session and then had Leaning caught by a tumbling Paul Walter at mid-wicket.
Cox was on 21 when he was dropped by Ben Allison off Doug Bracewell, but he failed to cash in, driving the same bowler to Harmer at backward point having added just six more.
Harmer then bowled Sam Billings middle stump for one and having passed his previous highest score for Kent, 168 vs Glamorgan in 2018, Crawley was finally caught behind off Jamie Porter, with Kent still 14 sort of the follow on target.
Joey Evison subsequently edged one past gully to get the hosts within 150 and although Hamid Qadri was caught behind off Matt Critchley for 16, Evison and McKerr batted through to stumps.
Kent’s Zak Crawley said: “I’m really pleased. The key to the innings, I reckon, was just staying very relaxed. I’ve been probably a bit too tense at the crease recently and I felt really relaxed and tried to play my natural game and it worked today, which was nice.
“It’s a really good cricket wicket, when you bowl well on it it’s tough to play and when we bowled well at times it seemed tough for their batters. When you didn’t bowl well it was really nice to score, it came on well, there was a bit of pace in the wicket and a bit of turn towards the end there as well, so it’s a shame the first two days got rained off because it could have set up a nice little finish, but we’ve still got to work hard to get the draw.
“Simon Harmer started bowling really well and was getting a bit more turn so I had to rein it in a little bit and score my runs from the seamers’ end. They were also giving me the one towards the end and trying to get me out of my rhythm, which they did pretty well all day.
“Joey Evison batted really well as well because it was important to get past the follow on target.
“It’s always nice to score runs and enjoy the game of cricket. That’s something that I’ve probably lacked in the last year, that enjoyment. At the end of the day it’s just a game, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for the last couple of weeks actually and I’m just going to play every game like I’m playing in the back garden and it worked today. Hopefully I can stick with that mindset because I think that’s the way to go forward. You can get too tense and that’s not going to be me at my best.
“Hopefully there’ll be a bit more cricket tomorrow because it’d be a shame if it’s another rain-affected day.”
Essex’s Simon Harmer said: “I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s not going to be much cricket tomorrow so both teams wanted to maximise points. We wanted to try and get as many batting points and we could and if we’d bowled them out cheaply we could have gone for the win, but I think it’s quite obvious that’s out of the questions so we’re just trying to take as many wickets and get as many bowling points as we can.
“I think with the newer ball there was definitely something there but as the ball got softer and older it started to turn less and less.
“I think the optimist would have been looking at a win, but if you look at how we played when we played conventionally, they only took one wicket. I think the wicket was quite flat and it’s a very good four-day wicket. I think if this had been played over four days it would have been a hell of a game, but with the weather playing a part and the amount of time we’ve lost realistically we weren’t going to be able to pull off the impossible.
“Zak obviously took his chances. He wanted to play aggressively and Kent wanted to try and get as many points as possible. He got the rub of the green and there was a dropped catch, but don’t take that away from him, he’s a hell of a player and hopefully he can have a successful Ashes series this summer.”