MATCH REPORT: Bohannon and Wells put on batting clinic in Canterbury as Lancashire take advantage on Day Two
Josh Bohannon and Luke Wells put on a record stand of 312 for Lancashire as they pummelled Kent on day two of their Vitality County Championship game at Canterbury.
Bohannon was unbeaten on 182 while Wells hit exactly 150 as the visitors closed on 402 for four, a first-innings lead of 158.
Lancashire batted through two full sessions without losing a wicket before Kent finally took a mini-cluster after tea. Beyers Swanepoel had their best figures with two for 61.
The crowd for the second day of the Canterbury Festival was swelled to 3,414 by around 1,600 school children from 44 schools, attending as part of a county initiative.
They all witnessed a horror show first session, with Wells and Bohannon battering a callow bowling attack.
Lancashire resumed on 38 for one and the closest Kent came to a wicket was when Wells lofted O’Riordan to mid-off and Jas Singh couldn’t reel him in.
Their only international-class bowler, Matt Parkinson, wasn’t used until the final over of the morning and by then the game seemed to have drifted away from the hosts. It was 168 for one at lunch, after which the batters enjoyed a race to three figures, which Bohannon won when he cut George Garrett for four through backward point.
Wells reached the landmark in less satisfying fashion, swishing Parkinson through the vacant slip cordon for two, but they soon overtook the biggest stand for any wicket between these two sides, eclipsing the 229 between Rob Key and Ed Smith at Tunbridge Wells in 2004 and taking Lancashire to 305 for one at tea.
It was tough for the home crowd: temperatures were so hot some of the natives in the supporters’ marquee even removed their blazers and midway through the afternoon a member on the Old Dover Road side of the ground was startled when several male voices went up in unison. “That’s an appeal,” his companion reassured him. “I think we had one this morning as well.”
The CAMRA tent was by now doing some serious business, presumably because it was selling the easiest way for the Kent fans to cope, although the evening session at least offered a sliver of hope. Wells swept his way to 150, steering Parkinson for two, but he finally fell in the 84th over, caught off Marcus O’Riordan at first slip by Charlie Stobo.
Stobo got his maiden championship wicket when George Bell dragged a leg-side delivery on to his off-stump off the back of his bat, and having sat on a balcony for six hours, George Lavelle got a golden duck, edging Beyers Swanepoel to O’Riordan, who took a head-high catch at second slip.
This mini-collapsed stemmed the flow of runs, but Bohannon was dropped off the luckless Singh in the penultimate over and he and Matty Hurst batted through to leave Lancashire in a dominant position at the end of day two.
