Charlie Shreck admitted that it had been “hard work” as he took 4-65 to put Kent in a strong position against Gloucestershire at Canterbury.
Speaking after the close of play, Shreck, who bowled 25 overs in the day, said: “It was hard work on that wicket. It didn’t really do as much as we were hoping it was going to after the first two days.
“When we heard the actual plan [with the declarations], I think all of the bowlers said ‘Yeah, definitely’. Having all-but 400 to bowl at, any bowling side would say yes. It’s very rare that 400 gets chased down, and we haven’t finished yet, but hopefully we’re in the ascendancy.”
The 35-year-old fast bowler admitted that Gareth Roderick’s unbeaten 152 had thwarted Kent’s efforts to wrap the game up tonight. He said: “Roderick played very nicely. If we could have got him out it would have opened both ends up, so he did well and he basically stopped us from winning late this afternoon.”
After finding success with the second new ball after a quiet spell in the game, Shreck admitted that the overs before the new ball came were tough.
“We had 15 overs of praying that we wouldn’t go for many and they would get done [with the old ball], but Mitch [Claydon], Darren Stevens and Treddy [James Tredwell] got through them. Then the new ball: fortunately I got on and I got a go with it and it bounced a bit more than the old thing.
“The odd one was just bouncing a little bit, which just helps me because I’m quite tall, so we just tried to extract as much of that as possible, and hopefully anything they nicked would go to hand.”
With just one wicket needed tomorrow, and the weather not looking promising, Shreck said that the side were taking nothing for granted with the win still not yet in the bag, but admitted that there were “not very many times” that he had had to come back the next morning needing just one wicket.
“We’re not going to be that relaxed about it – there’s no partying going on, we’re just going to turn up tomorrow, get through warm-ups and hopefully the rain will stay away.”