A double-century from Rob Yates put Warwickshire in a commanding position after day two of their LV= Insurance County Championship game with Kent at Canterbury.

The visitors declared their first innings on 549 for seven, a lead of 378, before reducing Kent to 55 for one at stumps.

Yates hit his highest first-class score of 228 not out from 421 balls, with 23 fours and a six, having batted for nearly nine hours. Australia’s Glenn Maxwell made 81 in his first championship appearance for four years and Henry Brookes was unbeaten on 52 as the visitors dominated throughout.

Chris Rushworth bowled Tawanda Muyeye early in Kent’s second innings and although Ben Compton and Joe Denly survived till the close, the hosts are still 323 behind with two days remaining.

Warwickshire began the day on 155 for two and they’d nudged into a three-run lead when Sam Hain edged Arshdeep Singh and fell to a diving catch by Jordan Cox for 32.

Jacob Bethell immediately went on the attack, clubbing Hamid Qadri for a six that flew into the gardens on the Old Dover Road side of the ground. The ball was lost, somewhere in the vicinity of a dead pigeon it had apparently hit.

Kent’s hopes were looking nearly as lifeless when Jack Leaning briefly revived them with two wickets in five balls. Bethell was out for 31, caught by a back-pedalling Arshdeep at deep mid on for 31 and Ed Barnard went for a four-ball duck, narrowly surviving an lbw shout off the third ball he faced before getting caught behind.

This spasm of hope for the home side quickly subsided as Yates and Maxwell put on a stand of 124. The former reached three figures when he cut Arshdeep to third man and the lead was exactly a hundred at lunch.

Maxwell looked set for a hundred, but he was caught behind chasing a wide delivery from Matt Quinn, though with the lead already past the 200 mark there was little celebration either in the middle or on the boundary.

The most dramatic moment of the afternoon session came when Yates hit Qadri for a six that went so far over the bowler’s head that it ended up smashing a glass panel on the balcony of the Kent dressing room.

Yates cruised past his previous highest score of 141 with a straight-driven four off Grant Stewart and it was 442 for six at tea.

Michael Burgess was subsequently out for 42, caught off Quinn by Harry Finch at backward point but Yates survived a major scare when he was on 199, chipping a ball from Qadri just out of reach of three fielders, before he drove the next ball through the covers to pass 200.

The declaration came as soon as Brookes had creamed Leaning for six to reach his half-century, leaving Kent with 14 overs to survive under increasingly ashen skies.

Muyeye lasted just five balls before Rushworth sent his off stump flying and although Denly and Compton made it to the close on 29 and 17 respectively, Kent will need something approaching a miracle over the next two days to avoid a damaging defeat.

Warwickshire’s Rob Yates said: “It’s a real special day. It’s nice to get a career-best score and it’s put us in a real good position and set us up nicely for the next two days.

“It’s a bit of a slow pitch and it takes a bit more to get going but Maxi came in today and got the cogs going in terms of the scoring rate and on that surface it was pretty helpful. I think that’s why there were no worries last night or even this morning. We’d set a foundation and with Burgess coming in at eight, he’s a genuine all-rounder. We’re in a really nice position now.

“You’re concentrating all the time, but once I’d got to 160 or 170 I felt pretty good. It was certainly a good tempo as we got the bonus points. I think they might invoice me for the broken glass! (after his six from Qadri).

“It was really handy to have taken a wicket tonight, obviously we’d have liked to have, being greedy, got one or two more and maybe not gone for 50 runs but I think that’s what you get when you’re trying to hunt wickets. It’ll be a tough graft to get these next nine, but that’s why we’re here.

“I always like playing here, it’s a nice ground and nice away trip and it’ll always hold a special place for me now.”

Kent’s Jack Leaning said: “We’ve got two big days coming ahead. We’ll try and bat for as long as we can, hopefully we’ll go past them and see where we end up.

“Credit to them, they’ve just showed us how to bat on a good wicket. Ultimately we’ve put ourselves behind in the game by how we’ve batted on day one, not necessarily because of how we’ve bowled.

“If we’re being totally honest with ourselves we should have been doing that to them on a good wicket, but look we’ve found ourselves where we’ve seen a lot of runs scored on this ground in the last few weeks so it’s our turn to stand up as a batting unit and be counted.

On having Warwickshire 225-5: “It’s obviously one of those situations where you want to get a few more wickets. There was a bit of spin on offer there but credit to them again, they’ve played nicely. Yates played a wonderful innings and showed what a bit of patience and application can do.

“I can’t fault the bowlers’ efforts and workload. They’ve given me everything I’ve asked from them and that’s been the case all season.”