Brown's bowling is bonus for Durham
Kent 363; Durham 11
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Your support makes all the difference.They are languishing at the bottom of the County Championship, yet Durham have more bowling bonus points than all 17 sides above them and their supporters must be wondering what has to be done to win a match. The main supplier of their wickets is Simon Brown and he must be wondering what he has to do to attract the England selectors.
His third five-wicket haul of the summer helped Durham to maximum bowling points for the eighth time in 10 Championship matches and brought Brown to within sight of 50 wickets for the season. The consistent performances of the left-arm seamer, who has just turned 27, are becoming harder to ignore. If he does get the Test nod it will leave Durham in a mess.
Without him there could could well have been a different pattern of events at cosy Mote Park yesterday, although Kent contributed to their downfall. There was a veritable ton of runs for the taking on a flat wicket, but Kent only seemed capable of doing things by halves - there were four half- centuries in all, any one of which could have and indeed should have been turned into a hundred.
Most culpable was the West Indies Test batsman Carl Hooper. Over the years he has taken a liking to the Maidstone Festival with a couple of big Championship hundreds. But having done the hard work he mis-hit to Phil Bainbridge at midwicket. The fielder could not quite get to the ball, which carried on to the boundary, so Hooper obligingly repeated the shot next ball and Bainbridge needed no second bidding.
Unluckiest of the other half centurions had to be Nigel Llong, who was looking extremely comfortable when he appeared to tread on his wicket, dislodging the off bail. Earlier David Fulton and Trevor Ward pulled Kent around from the shock of losing Matthew Fleming to the second ball of the day.
But having promised a wealth of runs Ward went to a poor shot before lunch, Fulton did last until after the interval, but he failed to stick around any longer. An uneventful afternoon session was then followed by a flurry of wickets - four falling in 22 balls and in the end only a brutal last-wicket partnership of 48 between Dean Headley and Eddie Stanford saw Kent reach maximum batting points.
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