Grant Stewart five-for gives Middlesex pink-ball nightmares

Middlesex 54 for 9 (Stewart 5-21) trail Kent 245 (Fuller 4-86) by 187 runs
Scorecard

Grant Stewart, Kent's burly Western Australian seamer, took five top-order wickets under the Canterbury lights as Middlesex collapsed to 54 for 9 in another setback for their promotion push.

Stewart, only playing thanks to the absence of Matt Henry (rested ahead of Saturday's Royal London Cup final) and Darren Stevens (who struggles to pick up the pink ball), had taken four wickets in as many games in his first-class career to date when he took the new pink ball; two hours later, he had his maiden five-wicket haul.

The pink Dukes, thought to hold together better than its Kookaburra equivalent, swung late in the fabled 'twilight period' after the sun disappeared behind the Frank Woolley Stand. Stewart jagged the ball back into the left-handers, and moved it sharply away from the right-handers' edges, ripping the heart out of Middlesex's top six in their response to Kent's 241 earlier in the day.

Middlesex's batsmen came and went in a hurry. First, Sam Robson's horror season continued. Four years ago last week, the right-hander made his England debut in the Lord's Test against Sri Lanka; here, he pushed apologetically at a Stewart away-swinger and he failed to pass 20 for the ninth time in 11 innings this campaign.

When the umpires took the players off soon after, with the low sun behind Stewart's arm rendering the ball impossible to see, it looked as though the Canterbury faithful were set for a floodlit farce: the lights were on, but nobody was in the middle.

But after the resumption, with the shadows lengthening, Stewart steamed in with menace and purpose. Next to go was Max Holden, stunned that a ball pitched well outside his off stump had fizzed back in, before Dawid Malan - who struggled against the pink ball in England's day-night Ashes Test last winter - edged a similar delivery to Sean Dickson at slip for a duck. At 19 for 3, Kent were on the charge.

Stewart soon had two more. Stevie Eskinazi, the only man to make double-figures in Middlesex's effort, prodded at a ball which hit the seam, before debutant George Scott was cleaned up. Harry Podmore's dismissal of Hilton Cartwright was sandwiched between Stewart's fourth and fifth, and Ivan Thomas skittled James Harris to leave Middlesex reeling at 54 for 7.

Calum Haggett got in on the act in the penultimate over, as John Simpson edged through to the keeper, before bowling Ravi Patel with the day's final ball: the collapse was six wickets for 10 runs, and Kent were in dreamland.

The visitors had hoped that last week's remarkable turnaround at Leicester would prove the catalyst for change in a season that had promised so much and delivered so little; but with the prospect of another day in the heat looming over them, already it will take a monumental effort to save this game.

For Kent, the final session completely changed their outlook after they had been frustratingly short of their best for the previous two.

In his first Championship appearance of the season, following an underwhelming stint with the Chennai Super Kings and some drinks-carrying for England, Sam Billings won the toss and chose to bat. It looked a poor decision: Tim Murtagh and Harris started well with the new ball, the latter trapping Dickson leg before in the first half-hour.

But the innings was one of loose shots, with the in-form pair of Heino Kuhn and Joe Denly both failing to kick on after getting in. Billings himself led the way in this department: after a high-elbow, hold-the-pose drive through extra cover for four before lunch and a kiss-the-surface punch down the ground off Murtagh, the runs dried up for him after the interval.

"Go on then," Murtagh's fourth-stump line said to the captain, "do something stupid." Billings duly obliged, and chipped to short cover for 17. Dragging himself off the field to the members' silence, he could not have envisioned the scene four hours later: Billings barely able to conceal his Chesire-cat grin, as Stewart led the sides off with Kent in complete control.