Flat pitch flatters Somerset

Kent 616-7 dec Somerset 389-8

I Was reading the other day, in the myriad of despatches from the Headingley Test, one former county captain suggesting it had become England's policy to bore the pants off the spectators. It's certainly the weather for it, though somehow I can't see the fashion catching on at Canterbury. Down here the good citizens of Kent look as if they'd be more at home among the Sancerre than the sans-culottes.

It could be a different story in Yorkshire, of course. These days the bottom is falling out of their cricket with indecent haste. Friday's defeat in two days by Gloucestershire not only exposed the Tykes' shortcomings, it virtually put paid to what, at the beginning of this month, had looked a very positive challenge for the Championship title. Now Yorkshire go into this week's Roses match at Headingley knowing that victory is essential if their challenge isn't to be consigned to the "so near, so far" category.

It won't have escaped any Yorkshireman's notice that Lancashire are a particular bete noir this season.

With Surrey, Leicestershire and Essex - the three front runners - all resting from the Championship this round, Yorkshire might have gone back to the top of the table had they won at Bristol. Even so, Kent and Derbyshire were still the likeliest to emerge ahead of Surrey on Monday night. The latter are already level on 192 points, thanks to their seven bonus points at Derby, but Kent did themselves no favours here yesterday.

Needing at least two wickets for a second bonus point, they failed to disturb Somerset's overnight pair, Richard Harden and Simon Ecclestone, until 116 of the 120 overs eligible for bonus points had gone.

It was always going to be an attritional day, even without the heat and the humidity. Kent's run fest on Thursday and Friday, albeit against a depleted bowling line-up, suggested a pitch on which runs could be rolled out rather than batsmen rolled over.

So it proved. Until Tim Wren broke through for Kent, the Somerset pair's occupancy gave every appearance of being a long-term lease rather than a short-term let. When Ecclestone was adjudged leg before for a career-best 94, they had put on 172 in 269 minutes.

They began the day with Somerset 119 for three and still needing another 348 runs to avoid the follow-on. Given the county's up-and-down record of late it would not have been surprising had they been batting again late last night. But some of Kent's rivals might have been justified in asking for a steward's inquiry. Kent have won only one Championship game at the St Lawrence ground this year, and with pitches like this it's easy to see why.

The day belonged to Harden. There was a Texan gunslinger of the same name, but if he hung around as long as his Somerset namesake there would have been Rangers and Federals swarming all over him. Our man came to the wicket on Friday afternoon in the 12th over and stayed for 126 overs until five o'clock yesterday. Coming off 399 balls, and containing 18 fours, his 136 - his first century of the season - was the stuff of the Alamo.

Ecclestone's innings was considerably more attractive. Strong through cover and backward of point, the left-hander hit 14 fours and a six into 219 balls, and was an ideal foil. Peter Bowler, who followed him, was more in the Harden mould and, while Carl Hooper's patient offspin made further inroads into the batting, he negotiated Somerset to the close, still 78 runs away from their follow-on target.

An entertaining day it wasn't, but people did keep their pants on.