Northamptonshire are still fighting to save the follow-on despite two seventies for skipper Ricardo Vasconcelos and Luke Procter on day three of this LV= Insurance County Championship match against Kent at Wantage Road.

Kent began the day hopeful of capitalising on a huge first innings 519 with the hosts on a precarious 21-2. Northamptonshire though rallied, losing only one wicket in each of the first two sessions.

The new ball brought two key scalps after tea with Matt Quinn’s pace accounting for Rob Keogh who had made an attacking 45 and put on 96 with Procter. Hopes of capitalising on those breakthroughs faded though when T20 skipper Josh Cobb hit some lusty blows and keeper Lewis McManus was dropped on one by Jas Singh.

Despite Cobb falling shortly before stumps, Northamptonshire are within 23 runs of saving the follow-on. It leaves Kent with a limited window tomorrow morning to press home their advantage and secure a first win of the season.

Northamptonshire negotiated an extended morning session for the loss of only nightwatchman Matt Kelly who was resolute in defence but aggressive in attack. He had extended his partnership with Vasconcelos to 61 when he was trapped in front by Quinn.

Vasconcelos, who rediscovered his touch with 156 against Warwickshire last weekend after an indifferent start to the season, continued where he left off at Edgbaston. An expansive waft outside off-stump on 26 was a rare early loss of concentration. Otherwise, he played a controlled innings, scoring all around the wicket, sweeping, driving and cutting fluently. He began the afternoon session in confident mood, hitting two fours off each of the first two overs. It was against the run of play therefore when he turned one from Darren Stevens straight to square leg.

Procter had been initially content to let Vasconcelos take the lead but after the captain’s wicket he too started to find the boundary. George Linde had got the ball to turn and bounce causing some problems initially, but Procter though started to use his feet to the spinners. He came down the track to Linde to dispatch him nonchalantly through midwicket for four before hitting the same bowler down the ground for six more to move to his half-century.

Keogh was equally harsh on the slow bowlers, hitting Linde straight for four under the bowler’s outstretched hands and a six.

Kent took the new ball after tea and at first Keogh seemed to enjoy the extra pace on the ball, taking seven runs off two balls from Darren Stevens. However, a quicker delivery from Quinn took him by surprise and kept low, before hitting top of middle and off.

Procter, who looked set to add to his two centuries so far this summer, then met his downfall in a moment of indecision when he failed to withdraw his bat after deciding against playing a cut shot to Grant Stewart and was caught behind.

Cobb started aggressively in white ball mode, smashing Quinn through extra cover for a boundary to open his account and then taking two more off the same bowler’s next over. He put on a quickfire stand of 52 with McManus to bring up the third batting point before playing one big stroke too many, caught off the leading edge when he took on Singh. Tom Taylor then joined McManus in an unbroken stand worth 30 to see out the day.

Northamptonshire captain Ricardo Vasconcelos who made 71 said: “It was a good day’s cricket really, I still think we’re in a decent position going into the last day. The longer we go, the more, only one result comes into it. So, that’s the challenge in the morning is how long we can keep going. The first target is get past that follow on and then get as close as we can to them, if not past them.

“Most of us went past 50 partnerships. That’s one good thing, is we never we never had one of those bang-bangs that we could have done very easily. But we’re a bit disappointed in firstly, the batters not going on to get that big score and then secondly, not that big partnership.

“Luke Procter is playing the best I’ve ever seen him play. If he can keep going like this, it’s going to be great for us as a team. Not only is he scoring a lot of runs but very important runs and he’s bowling very well as well, so he’s been great for us this year and long may it continue.”

Kent bowling coach Simon Cook said: “The discipline throughout the whole of the day was brilliant with all of the bowlers and we got the rewards at the end of the day. You’ve just got to hope we can get a couple of quick ones tomorrow and we can enforce the follow-on if that’s possible.

“It will come down to the first half an hour. On these sorts of pitches, it’s tough. And hopefully that kind of nervousness around getting close to that total will mean that we can capitalise on that. It’s realistically, the only way we’ll probably be able to force a result.

“The difference from this game to some of the other games is we held our lengths for longer. When things weren’t really happening, we created a lot of opportunities with the new ball. There’s lots going past the outside edge, but once that new ball went away and it got a bit softer, our disciplines were much better either staying very straight or going into the channel and that brought the rewards. Once you can hold your lines and hold your lengths, it’s much easier to set fields and then suddenly those balls kind of go and get clipped to midwicket where we had a couple of catches and the game suddenly feels a little bit easier and you feel like you can control the game for bigger periods.”

“It’s very nice to have 500 on the board first up as well. It’s the first time we’ve really led a game this year and it shows that when we can get on top, we’re a very strong side. Our challenge going forwards is can we wrestle games back into our favour when it hasn’t gone quite so well in that first innings.

“There are positive signs [from this game]. Jas Singh coming into this game bowled a couple of really, really good spells, controlled one side of the ground, forced some mistakes there and an important wicket of Josh Cobb at the end there. He’s a very dangerous player like he showed. He likes to play his shots and potentially could have taken the game right away from us even today. So, it gives us an opportunity tomorrow.”