Kent have just completed the biggest win, by runs margin, in their history, and the fourth biggest ever win in County Championship cricket. Yorkshire, their victims, lost by the astonishing margin of 433 runs. Kent’s previous best was against Northamptonshire at Dover in 1933, when we won by a mere 429 runs. A bizarre statistic has emerged from Andrew Sansom, the TMS statistician, showing that only once in cricket history has a team won by a wider margin having been five wickets down for fewer than 50 runs in their first innings (a somewhat obscure category, it must be admitted). That was achieved by the Indian side Maharashtra, who beat Nawanagar (Ranji’s old princedom) by 489 runs in Pune in 1944, having been 46 for 5 at one point on the first day.
There was a whole clutch of records beaten at Headingley. We have to start with the amazing Darren Stevens who, at the age of 43 years and 142 days, made the highest score of his career, 237, in the first innings, and in so doing became the second oldest Kent player ever to score a county double hundred. The oldest was Frank Woolley, who was 48 years old when he scored 229 against Surrey at the Oval in July 1935, but Stevo overtook Leslie Ames, who was comparatively a babe in arms, just a few months short of his 43rdbirthday when he scored 212 against Gloucestershire at Dover in 1948. It is quite something for Stevo to be up there with two men who have stands named after them at the St Lawrence Ground. Oh, and his 237 was the highest score ever by a Kent batsman against Yorkshire, knocking David Fulton’s 207 at Maidstone in 1998 off the pedestal.
Stevo also took five for 20 in Yorkshire’s second innings, joining a select band of players to have scored a double hundred and taken a five-for in the same game. He is the oldest to achieve this feat since W.G. Grace in 1895. Stevens will no doubt be setting his sights on Grace’s record as the compiler of the highest score ever seen at Canterbury (344 not out), when our final game of the season begins against Hampshire next week. Having taken ten wickets in the previous match, against Nottinghamshire, he is only the fifth player to have taken ten wickets in a match and scored a double century over the age of 43. Needless to say, both W.G. Grace and Frank Woolley are on this list.
Along with Sam Billings, Darren put together a record sixth wicket partnership for Kent, 346 in 64 overs, beating first of all the 235 that Graham Cowdrey and Steve Marsh made against Yorkshire in 1992, and then the 315 that Mark Ealham and Aravinda de Silva made against Nottinghamshire in 1995. It also very satisfactorily eclipsed the highest sixth wicket partnership ever made against Kent, 337 by Richard Montgomerie and David Capel of Northants in 1995. It was also the fifth highest partnership made for any wicket by Kent, and the highest sixth-wicket partnership ever made at Headingley.
As if that was not enough, during the game, Stevens became the first man to take 50 wickets and score 500 runs in Division One this year, while Harry Podmore and Matt Milnes both also racked up their 50thwickets of the season, giving Kent the rare luxury of having three bowlers hitting that mark in the same season, a rarity indeed. Last year, only Matt Henry (remember him?) reached that target, though Podmore and Stevens both took over 40 wickets apiece. For a team whose bowling was supposed to be the weak link (along with the batting) in Division One, this is a great achievement, which pays tribute not only to the determination and skills of the players, but also of the physiotherapy department, and not least to the coaching of Allan Donald.
Although this game will always be known as Stevo’s Match, we should not forget the contribution of Sam Billings. Apart from his part in the record partnership, he also scored a century in the second innings, to become the first man ever to score two hundreds in a county championship game at Headingley. The only other man ever to score two hundreds in a game there is the West Indian Shai Hope, who did so two summers ago in the Test against England. It is astonishing to think that none of the great Yorkshire batsmen – Sutcliffe, Hutton, Boycott or even Darren Lehmann – managed this feat. Having scored a hundred in his previous innings as well, Sam now has three hundreds for Kent in successive innings, a feat rare enough to put him level with Leslie Ames (twice), Jack Mason (twice), David Fulton and Neil Taylor, but still one behind Wally Hardinge, Frank Woolley and – much more recently – Ed Smith, the national selector (hint, hint), who all managed four in a row. The last man to score two hundreds in a game for Kent, by the way, was Martin van Jaarsveld against Surrey at the Oval in 2008. In that match, MvJ also took five for 33 in Surrey’s second innings, so that’s something that Stevo has not yet achieved – two hundreds and a five-for.
At the same time as this was all happening in Yorkshire, Dominic Sibley was scoring a double hundred and a hundred in Warwickshire’s game against Nottinghamshire, something that neither Stevens nor Billings have yet managed for Kent, although Da Silva, Fagg (two double hundreds), Fulton, Hardinge and Neil Taylor (twice) all have done. To add to the statistical glories of the week, Kyle Abbott took 17 wickets for 86 runs as Hampshire crushed the Championship leaders Somerset. Those figures are exceptional by any standards, but not quite as good as Colin Blythe’s 17 for 48 (in one day) against Northamptonshire in 1907 or ‘Tich’ Freeman’s 17 for 67 against Sussex in 1922.
Kent rules, O.K.?