Matt Milnes, Mitch Claydon rattle Somerset as Kent make fast start

Kent will be relegated this season. More or less all the pundits say so. The snag is that a year ago those same Jeremiahs were saying the county wouldn't get within the length of Deal Pier of being promoted and Matt Walker, Kent's coach, encouraged his players to surprise both their critics and themselves. So there was a pleasing continuity about the visitors' fine performance this hazy Saturday at Taunton.

Their seamers made up for the absence of Matt Henry to dismiss Somerset for 171 and their opening batsmen, Zak Crawley and Sean Dickson, showed fine judgement to put on 71 before Crawley was taken at second slip by Marcus Trescothick off Craig Overton for 39. Nightwatchman Harry Podmore fell to Josh Davey two overs before the close but these rewards were thin gruel when set beside the five wickets earned by Mitch Claydon and the three taken by the Kent debutant, Matt Milnes.

In the morning, Dickson and Matt Renshaw will resume their innings and the deficit is only 86. Yes, it is only one day at the beginning of a long season but Heino Kuhn's players could not have done more to embolden their supporters.

But pleasure was not confined to cricket lovers from Whitstable and Sevenoaks early on this second day; it was shared by all who walked up James St and watched low grey cloud lift from Wellsprings and Pyrland before the Quantocks emerged in gentle sunlight. This was better than Friday, when bright skies on the treeline had soon given way to rain's thick gauze with the covers on by 9.20am. And even that damp gloom had encouraged vernation around town: "Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous / Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water, / Is earth's most multiple excited daughter;" wrote Philip Larkin.

But to the disappointment of those expecting a prompt start, wet patches at the River End delayed play until 1.10pm. Some of those areas were on a part of the outfield occupied by a walkway needed for the erection of the new floodlights in the winter and the boundary rope had to be brought in before cricket could begin.

The hold-up was a particular frustration for the NHS staff to whom Somerset had generously given free admission for today's play. Perhaps, some thought, the umpires had decided to make the hard-working medics feel at home by ensuring there was a four-hour waiting time before the main business of the day got under way. Viewed in that context, a delay of only 130 minutes was spit-spot, as Mary Poppins, another healthcare professional, might have put it.

But the sight of Darren Stevens bowling the eighth ball of the Championship season to Trescothick rather deprived matters of their juvenescent gloss. It is difficult to ponder the eternal youth of springtime cricket when the combined age of the participants is 85.

As it turned out neither Trescothick nor Stevens was to make an important contribution to proceedings. The veteran opener had made only 10 when he lost his off stump to Harry Podmore in the ninth over of the innings and any doctors sitting in the batsman's eponymously named stand may have had to look slippy with the defibrillators at this reverse. As for Stevens, he was the only Kent bowler not to take a wicket although, like his colleagues, he was never afraid to risk boundaries by hitting an attacking length.

And Trescothick's wicket rather set the tone of the next hour's cricket. The greenness of this Taunton pitch did not deceive; rather than being a featherbed, it required a little more respect than was shown by Eddie Byrom when he slashed Milnes straight to Stevens in the gully. But by the time Byrom was out Azhar Ali and James Hildreth had also departed, both caught at slip, with Azhar giving Milnes his first wicket for Kent after his close-season move from Nottinghamshire. Azhar and Hildreth did little more than push cautiously forward to balls which nipped a little off the pitch; both batsmen had hit five boundaries but neither could cover the bowlers' movement, a weakness they shared with many of their colleagues.

The only batsman whose innings lasted longer than an hour was Tom Abell, who made 49 before top-edging a hook off Claydon to the safe hands of Milnes at long leg. Until he made that error, Abell's batting had looked both fluent and relatively safe, albeit that he had been dropped by wicketkeeper Ollie Robinson off Milnes when he had only a single.

But the Somerset skipper's dismissal was the first of six wickets taken by Kent in 13 overs after tea and no other home batsman encouraged confidence that a batting bonus point would be gained. Everyone bar Davey hit a boundary but by doing so they encouraged Kuhn's bowlers to pitch the ball up. Claydon and Milnes did so readily and the latter's accuracy was an eloquent comment on the current strength of seam bowling at Trent Bridge.

Somerset's innings had occupied 48 overs which had been littered with boundaries, close things and ten wickets. The 30 overs faced by Kent's batsmen were tranquil by comparison. Until those two late wickets, Hildreth's dropping of Dickson at slip off Lewis Gregory was the only event to trouble Kent's watching director of cricket, Paul Downton. Somerset's supporters can only hope for early wickets on Sunday. Until then, they can join the rest of us and be comforted by the recollection of a Saturday when they praised with elation the new morning.