Centuries by Luke Wells, Josh Bohannon and Ashton Turner on debut have given Lancashire a chance of defeating Kent on the final day of the County Championship match at Blackpool and thereby securing their first red-ball victory of the season.
Replying to the visitors’ 374, Lancashire were 639-9 at the close after a day in which their batsmen savaged Daniel Bell-Drummond’s attack.
Wells made 152, Bohannon 124 and Turner a career-best 154 on a day when their county amassed the highest total in matches between the sides.
Lancashire will go into the final day with a lead of 261 and the decision facing stand-in skipper James Anderson is whether to declare overnight or club a few more runs before trying to force a win on a docile surface. The latter seems unlikely.
In a first session slightly curtailed by a light shower, Lancashire added 105 runs in 30.5 overs for the loss of nightwatchman Tom Bailey, who had made 25 untroubled runs before he was lbw on the front foot to Joey Evison.
Otherwise, the highlight of the morning was Wells reaching his third first-class century for Lancashire against Kent when he reverse-swept Jack Leaning to the third man boundary. The Red Rose opener had faced 195 balls and hit twelve fours and a six.
However, the first session proved to be merely the prelude to an even more severe assault on the Kent bowling in the next two sessions.
After taking 24 balls to get off the mark, Bohannon reached his fifty off a further 78 deliveries with an on-drive off Evison. In the next over Wells lost the ball when he walloped Matt Parkinson for a six over the wall at the South End to bring up his own 150.
Next ball, however, the former Lancashire leg-spinner applied to balm to his wounded pride when Wells tried to repeat his previous stroke and was well caught by Wes Agar at long off for 152. That dismissal ended the opener’s enterprising 136-run stand with Bohannon and it left his side still 71 runs shy of Kent’s first innings total.
Despite having made his runs in a minute short of six hours during which he hit 17 fours and three sixes, Wells’ dejection at his dismissal clearly suggested he thought he had missed a big opportunity to make an even bigger contribution. The cricket that followed supported that judgement.
Turner joined Bohannon and the pair put on a further 174 runs either side of tea, with Turner making an immediate impact in his first innings for Lancashire, reaching his hundred off 117 balls with six fours and four sixes
Bohannon had earlier reached his century off 191 balls with a square cut off his old team mate Parkinson, having hit nine fours and three sixes but he was eventually caught by Agar off Jack Leaning’s off-spin for 124, having hit 10 fours and four sixes in his 210-ball innings.
Late in the day, Matty Hurst was bowled for 21 by Evison, who took his third wicket and finished with 3-61 from 21 overs on a day when he had plainly been the pick of the Kent attack.
Eight overs before the close Turner was caught at long off by Leaning off Parkinson and Michael Jones fell to the same combination for 41, leaving the leg-spinner with figures 3-188 from 35 overs. Jaydn Denly took two late wickets.
The problem now for Anderson and his bowlers is that this Stanley Park pitch still looks very flat and it will take all of Anderson’s wiles and a shrewd rotation of his bowlers to take ten wickets in one day, given that only 19 have fallen in the first three, five of today’s dismissed batsmen perishing to catches in the deep.
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