Dowman, Dean lead determined Derby

By the end of the second day in this County Championship match at Canterbury, the scoreboard shows that Kent trails Derbyshire by as few as 216 runs with six first innings wickets still at its disposal. Happily for the visitors, though, it fails to express how admirably they have fought to seize a definitive upper hand by the game's halfway point.

With their ranks as stretched as they are for this battle, the visitors will undoubtedly derive particular pleasure from their effort inextending their first innings tally to a final mark of 279 upon the match's resumption today. Notwithstanding the notion that only four of their players ventured past a score of 13, this was an innings built not only around steady accumulation but also collective hard work, a quality which has generally eluded the team this season. By its completion, the only hint of a sour note to emerge was that, in taking more than one and a half days to get there, they seemed to have limited their chances of gaining the mass of points they need from this fixture to set about the task of averting Division One relegation.

For batting highlights, much of the responsibility was left to Matthew Dowman. His 77, an innings which stands out as his most encouraging in a summer in which he has so far struggled to adjust to the demands of playing for a new county, featured an array of well composed drives. While his own unflinching patience tested that of the spectators, Simon Lacey (41) also proved a handy foil, sharing with the dogged Dowman in a valuable stand of 68 for the seventh wicket.

To then make matters more frustrating for the local crowd, they were forced to watch on helplessly as their team was brilliantly undone by an exemplary spell of seam bowling from Kevin Dean (4/17). It was Dean's influence which took the edge off Kent's reply and laid the platform for his team to assume almost complete command of of proceedings. On the road to recovery after a string of back and hip injuries, the left armer took a little time to warm to the task but, on finding his rhythm, produced a devastating ten over spell to dispense with David Fulton (16), Rahul Dravid (2), Ed Smith (2) and Matthew Walker (0) in eerily quick succession.