Eddie Allcorn’s Blog: Where did the summer go?

Blimey, where did the summer go? Well September has crept up on us all but for once the Kent faithful have something really positive to look forward to as the cricket season approaches the business end.

Victory over Gloucestershire in the Quarter Final of the Royal London Cup on Friday evening to earn a trip to Edgbaston to play Warwickshire in the semi-final has got many fans dreaming of another Lord’s Final and the chance to end the hoodoo of seven straight defeats since Derbyshire were beaten way back when in 1978.

Of course it will be a tough ask to get past an in-form Warwickshire side on their own patch fresh from their triumph there on the T20 Finals Day.

The Bears might be favourites and third in Division One of the Championship but Kent have enjoyed a splendid campaign in the 50 over format thus far, in no small part due to the phenomenal form of a young Mr Billings.

In just six innings in eight games the wicketkeeper-batsman has plundered an astonishing 418 runs at an average of 104.5! One century (135) and four fifties thus far at a strike rate of 162.6 per 100 balls with the help of 42 fours and 16 sixes means Kent have a genuine match winner in their midst whose name isn’t Darren Stevens.

The build up to the crunch Gloucestershire game didn’t exactly go smoothly, defeat to Hampshire in the Championship during Cricket Week followed by the dead rubber against Middlesex in the Royal London group stage had somewhat taken the wind from the Kentish sails.

The New Zealand A tourist game was then disrupted by the elements and switched to a one day 50 over contest, in theory an ideal warm up for the Cup game, but the chaps from New Zealand were in no mood to do us a favour and instead humiliated a fairly strong Kent XI by a whopping 172 runs.

They chalked up 239 all out largely thanks to Brownlie’s 112, on a wicket that had been used previously and was doing a bit, it looked a handy score and so it proved as Kent were dispatched for an alarming 67 in just 23.4 overs.

Add that result to the other tourist game this summer and you have Kent losing the two one day games by 300 runs whilst being bowled out twice for a sum total of 240 in 60.1 overs. Not something they’ll want to repeat in the four day game against Australia next summer!

The actual day of the game saw Kent minus Tredwell (England duty), Bollinger (back to Hobart to prepare for the “Champions League”) and assorted injuries seemingly accounting for Bell-Drummond, Nash and Haggett too.

Five overs in and with Kent 11-2 it looked like the Spitfires were destined to “concentrate on the league” but the beauty of the 50 over format is that there is enough time for teams to recover from a disastrous start and rebuild.

Kent did precisely that thanks to a careful anchoring innings from Northeast, a fluent 51 from Cowdrey and another electrifying knock from Super Sam, this time a belligerent 61 from 36 balls (7x 4’s, 3x 6’s).

Unfortunately a late order collapse by a vulnerable looking tail (from 215-4 to 242 all out and nine unused balls) left many fans fearing the worst.

The game then ebbed and flowed dramatically, putting those inside The Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence and watching on Sky or following online or the radio right through the wringer.

When Gloucestershire were on 74-1 from less than fifteen overs, the target Kent had set began to look ominously mediocre, but their own mini collapse to 101-5 and then 125-6 had the home fans in good heart.

As ever with Kent there was a twist as the Gloucester late middle order dug in, adding 53 for the seventh wicket and 26 for the eighth. In the end the visitors faded, Griffiths finishing off the west country menace despite one earlier over littered with wides but then grabbed a crucial wicket.

The unfancied Harmison also chipped in with 3-40 from his ten overs. It really had been quite a team effort, the whole being rather better than the various parts on paper.

That crucial parts were played by local young players (Northeast, Billings, Cowdrey) was heartening for all those cheering on Kent.

It was a shame that more people hadn’t been able or willing to attend such a gripping match. The ebb and flow had both sets of fans feeling pretty confident and also resigned at different points. Eminently more satisfying than any T20 game this season and yet perhaps a third of how many might have turned up twenty years ago.

It is also unclear how many might make it to the semi-final in Birmingham either, Warwickshire are letting Members of both clubs in for free and have slashed prices for the general public too, a worthy gesture to attract more spectators, but not ideal for Kent Cricket whose 25 per cent share of the receipts might not add up to much by the end of the evening.

The problem is with such a quick turn around and the game played during the week under lights a lack of public transport options, no organised coach from Canterbury, many potential fans will simply have to settle for watching the denouement on Sky.

Thirty years ago I travelled by coach from Canterbury to Edgbaston for a wonderful Nat West semi-final, Benson scored a century and Kent triumphed.

We faced Middlesex in the Final in ‘84, the first final I ever attended, we lost off the last ball in the dark, as a young kid sitting down by the corner of the old Grandstand I was heart-broken.

You can track down the BBC highlights of the classic final on Youtube, a real throwback in terms of style of coverage and what Lord’s looked like. There is also coverage of Kent’s semi-final with Essex back in 1983. An 11,000 crowd at Canterbury and the sort of deep roar that greeted a wicket that you’d associate with football nowadays.

Those days might be gone but the desire to finally win a Lord’s Final still burns brightly within all Kent fans. We might be the unfancied, unfashionable outsiders but we also know that judging by their reaction to winning last Friday the players really want it too…

At the Nackington Road End the usual “Grumblers” have been in fine fettle given the Gloucestershire win, the opening day of the crucial Glamorgan Championship game has seen them agree on the unofficial association’s new motto – Absit Beatus – “Never Knowingly Happy”(!), and then experienced an increasingly surreal afternoon where one of their number got called “God” (which he quite liked).

Another then returned from the free health check tent on the ground and proudly announced they only had a 99% chance of dying (1% better than the rest of us, death usually being hereditary), one then won the autographed bat up for grabs if you went for the aforementioned health M.O.T. whilst at the tea interval everyone was transfixed by the very real possibility that the dog belonging to one of the ground staff might make an unscheduled deposit on a length on the wicket!

Today (day two) the high spirits continued with one wag christening the temporary Heath Robinson-esque “sightscreen” in front of the Woolley Stand “Fifty Shades Of Grey” and the general conviviality was a bit unnerving. It is amazing what a bit of success does for the spirits and the soul.

Kent fans have been somewhat starved to success in recent years, it would all be rather splendid if the team could reward their stoicism with another win at Edgbaston, but we are under no illusions how difficult that will be though…

Nevertheless, Come On Super Kent!