Hemp a man among boys as Kent pile on the pressure

It was the men of Kent taking on the boys from Wales, with the honourable exception of David Hemp, whose gritty hundred, which took him past 1,000 runs for the season, ensured a solitary batting point as well as a degree of pride in the Glamorgan reply.

It was Hemp's third century of the of the summer, chiselled out over three gutsy hours, but he lacked support from his team-mates.

The morning session had begun with further misery for the dejected Welsh attack. They lost the rookie seamer Huw Waters after he had sent down one over, when he suffered a calf strain fielding in the deep.

He had to watch as Darren Stevens and Andrew Hall took their sixth wicket partnership to a record for this fixture of 267.

Stevens reached a maiden double hundred, the South African Hall made his highest score on these shores and Min Patel cracked an attractive half century off 55 balls to leave Glamorgan with a veritable mountain to climb.

Little wonder that Stevens was able to lay waste what remained of a dispirited attack. But it got worse. The brittle Glamorgan batting, which came into this game having followed on five times this season already, showed no improvement.

The 17-year-old batsman Mike O'Shea lasted just five balls for his debut duck before the promotion of Alex Wharf up the order produced a half-century stand for the Glamorgan sixth wicket, but too many key men had fallen by then.

The openers Dan Cherry and Mark Wallace went in the first two overs with two runs from a no-ball on the board. Another relative rookie Jonathan Hughes managed one run before departing in the fifth over, presenting Kent with their first bowling bonus point, which in turn lifted them to the top of the First Division table. As far as Glamorgan were concerned, it was all steeply downhill after that.