Match scorecard<\/a><\/p>\nChris Benjamin hit 70 as Kent reached 356-7 at stumps on day one of their County Championship game with Middlesex at Canterbury.<\/p>\n
Ben Compton and Ben Dawkins also hit half-centuries, making 53 and 50 respectively, as Kent benefited from a series of partnerships.<\/p>\n
The hosts did not have things all their own way however, and were kept in check.<\/p>\n
For Middlesex, Seb Morgan took 4-90, and Tom Helm claimed 3-63 to remain in the contest.<\/p>\n
The 174th Canterbury Festival got under way in front of a crowd of 2,628, swelled by over 1,000 schoolchildren. They witnessed an opening session for the purists, with Kent choosing to bat and inching to 64 without loss at lunch.<\/p>\n
There was plenty of movement, and while little of it troubled the batters, it took 39 minutes before the first boundary, from Dawkins.<\/p>\n
Dawkins had nudged his way to 50 soon after the resumption, edging Morgan for four, when he went to the same bowler, caught by Max Holden off a leading edge.<\/p>\n
Helm subsequently got both Compton and Daniel Bell-Drummond caught behind, the latter for five after an athletic grab by Joe Cracknell.<\/p>\n
He then bowled Sam Northeast for 42 with one that cut back and bent his off- stump backwards, putting Middlesex in a far happier mood at tea, when it was 202-4.<\/p>\n
Kent responded with another half-century stand, but this was broken when Morgan had Ekansh Singh caught behind for 17.<\/p>\n
Benjamin cut Zafar through backward point to reach his 50 and Grant Stewart survived a dicey opening spell to dump Naavya Sharma for six over midwicket.<\/p>\n
Their partnership, worth 64, was broken when Morgan had Benjamin caught behind and Stewart was two shy of his half-century when Morgan bowled him off stump, but Keith Dudgeon and Matt Milnes added some useful runs, steering Kent to a third batting point shortly before stumps.<\/p>\n
Report by ECB Reporters’ Network, supported by Rothesay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rothesay County Championship, Division Two, St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury (day one) Kent 356-7: Benjamin 70, Compton 53, Dawkins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-647769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}