| Vitality County Championship Division One, Spitfire Ground, Canterbury (day four) |
| Kent 244 & 262: Evison 53, Parkinson 39, Denly 38; Worrall 4-31, Steel 3-38 |
| Surrey 543-7 dec: Sibley 150, Lawrence 112, Burns 69, Smith 58; Parkinson 5-177 |
| Surrey (24pts) beat Kent (2pts) by an innings and 37 runs |
Surrey beat Kent by an innings and 37 runs in County Championship Division One despite defiant batting by the home side on the final day at Canterbury .
The reigning champions dismissed the hosts for 262 in their second innings, with Dan Worrall taking 4-31 and Cameron Steel 3-38.
Steel remains the leading wicket-taker in the country this season with 20 after three matches.
Joey Evison made 53 and Matt Parkinson hit his highest first-class score of 39 but after a dogged rearguard action that saw them through the morning session, Kent subsided midway through the afternoon.
The hosts were 120-5 overnight, still 179 runs in arrears, and their slim hopes were dealt a near-fatal blow when Ben Compton was caught behind off Worrall in the fifth over of the morning for 17.
- County Championship: Relive day four as it happened
Parkinson, promoted up the order to number eight, had spent the winter working on his batting as part of a concerted effort to shore up Kent’s lower order and although there were a few alarms by lunch, Kent had reached 203-6 and the impossible now seemed merely improbable.
Evison, however, fell in the afternoon’s third over. He cut Tom Lawes for fours off successive boundaries to reach his half-century but then edged him behind.
With Evison gone, Kent crumbled. George Garrett was lbw to Steel for five and Jas Singh went for a duck when Jamie Smith took a brilliant catch at short leg off the same bowler.
Number 11 Arafat Bhuiyan had some fun with the new ball, flicking three consecutive balls from Kemar Roach for a six and two fours on his way to his highest Championship score of 22 not out, making him the fourth Kent tail-ender to reach that personal landmark in this match after Garrett and Singh hit their career-best scores in the first innings.
This merely delayed Surrey’s celebrations, however, and an emphatic victory was sealed when Smith took another exceptional close catch to snare Parkinson off Roach.
