Nottinghamshire opener Ben Slater completed his first LV=Insurance County Championship hundred since April last year to lay the foundation for a solid opening day against Kent at Trent Bridge.

The left-hander, who has had a lean year by the standards he has set in recent seasons, made exactly 100, with wicketkeeper Tom Moores finishing unbeaten on 72 as Nottinghamshire closed on 275 for five.

Kent’s bowling lacked consistency.  Matt Quinn and Arshdeep Singh kept to a little over two runs an over but Jas Singh’s two wickets came at a cost of 11 fours and a six in 12 overs.

Beset by injuries and other non-availabilities, Kent were forced to sign two on-loan batters ahead of this fixture but might have expected more from their seam attack on a pitch that looked green enough to have tempted Nottinghamshire to bowl first had they won the toss.

Under an overcast morning sky, batting looked hazardous when the stumps were under threat but Kent’s bowlers were too often wide of that mark in the opening session, conceding boundaries in 12 consecutive overs across one expansive passage of play.

Joey Evison, a talented all-rounder who left Trent Bridge last year through lack of opportunities, inflicted the only wound to the Nottinghamshire top order when Haseeb Hameed, who was beginning to find his timing after a slow start, played all round one that hit the knee roll of his front pad.  

The exception among the Kent seamers was Arshdeep Singh, the Indian white-ball international left-armer who is playing in the last of his five first-class matches in England this summer. Unlucky at times from the pavilion end as Nottinghamshire reached 116 for one at lunch, he was rewarded for switching ends shortly afterwards as the New Zealander Will Young, another at the end of a short-term contract, pushed forward to a ball that found the edge.

Nonetheless, the day was still unfolding nicely for Nottinghamshire until just over an hour into the afternoon session, when they lost Joe Clarke and then Slater within four overs. Clarke, who had steered his first ball for four to the short boundary on the Bridgford Road side, looked in ominously good touch as he drove and pulled two more boundaries and then hoisted Jas Singh over the longer boundary for six.

Yet he was stopped in his tracks on 22 when pinned in front by a swinging delivery from Matt Quinn. Minutes later, after running three from a straight drive to complete his hundred from 150 balls, Slater was squared up a touch by a ball from Jas Singh that found the thinnest of edges, a second catch for Harry Finch, who continued as stand-in wicketkeper with Jordan Cox injured and Sam Billings taking time away from the game.

It left Steven Mullaney and Tom Moores with a rebuilding job at 169 for four, not helped by a stoppage of 108 minutes after a burst of heavy rain followed by a lengthy mopping-up operation.

The delay cost 15 overs and, seemingly, Kent’s hopes of building any momentum on the back of those two important wickets as the fifth-wicket partners added 83 before there was another breakthrough, Mullaney falling leg before as Jas Singh hurried one through.  

Kent had missed two chances along the way, with Mullaney dropped inexplicably by Ben Compton at first slip on 16 off Arshdeep Singh, and Moores given a life moments after his eighth four had taken him to a 77-ball half-century as Jas Singh shelled a difficult caught-and-bowled.

Nottinghamshire’s Ben Slater, who top scored with exactly 100, said:

“Whenever you score a hundred, it is a momentous occasion. They don’t come around that often when you are opening the batting against the new ball.

“There was a bit of relief in there as well. It has been a bit frustrating for me, the way this season has gone, so it feels good to get a score.

“I think the most frustrating thing about this season for me is that I’ve never felt out of form. I felt I have been playing well all the way through. I’ve had a couple of fifties but at other times it has been a case of getting a good ball, and a few odd dismissals here and there, but I’ve never felt I was out of form.

“There was a bit in the pitch, as there usually is here on the first day. There is a bit of grass on the pitch, which is always conducive to seam bowling. We would probably have bowled first as well if we had won the toss. I think it will be similar tomorrow, so hopefully we can take advantage when it is our turn to bowl.

“As it was, Kent probably bowled a bit better in the middle session than they did in the first, which showed with a few wickets falling.

“But we made a good recovery from where we were with Mull (Steven Mullaney) and Tom (Moores) playing well. They way they played after that middle session steadied the ship a bit. It puts us in a good position and hopefully we can kick on in the morning.

“After the result last week, if we can get a win out of this one it maybe gives us a bit of breathing space going into the last month of the season after the 50-over competition. So we know the importance of the game and we will be working hard for the next three days to try to get a win.”

Kent head coach Matt Walker said:

“With the squad we had available we have had to play two young bowlers in this game, so the expectation levels are a bit different. For those players it is about development.

“But having won the toss, which we felt was a good toss to win, we would have liked the day to have gone a bit better.

“There was plenty in the wicket but in that first session we gave away too many freebies, we got cut a bit too often, didn’t create enough pressure early on.

“Using that new ball well on that wicket was pretty key and 100 for one at lunch was not quite where we wanted to be.  We came back well in the second session but let things slip a bit at the end. We got a bit sloppy and dropped a couple of catches.

“We did not use the ball well enough and we weren’t consistent enough through the day, but we know where we are with the squad. It was nowhere near our first-choice bowling attack and that is no disrespect to the lads that came in.

“In terms of injuries, it has been the most extraordinary period I can remember with so many players going down.  But it is just what it is, you can’t help it. You have to deal with it as best you can.”