A miserable second-innings batting display saw Kent bowled out for a measly 85 in their away County Championship Division 1 loss to Nottinghamshire on Friday.

Opening bowlers Dane Paterson (5-41) and Brett Hutton (4-44) led the way for the hosts who dismissed Kent, now in the bottom two with three red-ball matches to play this summer, inside just 21.3 overs.

Kent red-ball skipper Jack Leaning's 21 was a paltry top score as the visitors - theoretically chasing 407 to win - were dismissed in their 321-run defeat.

Earlier, Will Young and Ben Slater had made 87 and Joe Clarke 73 before Nottinghamshire declared their second innings on 372, before lunch.

Slater, his eyes on a second hundred in the match, fell to the fifth ball of the final day, unable to add to his overnight score. But otherwise, Nottinghamshire's plans on how to set up a run chase couldn’t have gone better.

If anything, they went too well - the scoreboard turning so rapidly skipper Steven Mullaney might well have had to think again about when to declare.

When he did decide the moment was right, some 196 runs had been added in 78 minutes following their resumption on 176-1.

Of those, 114 came off just 77 balls in a blistering third-wicket stand between New Zealand's Young, who made 87 in the last innings of his brief attachment to the county, and Clarke, who blasted 73 from 40 balls.

Clarke hit three sixes, matching Young's tally of maximums in half the number of balls, and there were a couple each for Mullaney and Lyndon James, who hammered 42 in 18 balls for the sixth wicket before Mullaney's dismissal. He was bowled, aiming to inflict more damage in an Arafat Bhuiyan (1-41) over that had already gone for 20, which prompted the declaration.

Eventually caught at deep midwicket, Clarke should have gone for 26 but Arshdeep Singh, in his final Kent outing, dropped a regulation catch at mid-off. Joey Evison (1-46), the disappointed bowler and Clarke's former team-mate, was only too aware of how costly that mistake might be.

Like Clarke, Young and Tom Moores were caught in the deep going for big returns as the home side ultimately pushed the Kent target beyond 400, which was never likely to be a realistic ask for a depleted side lacking so many frontline batsmen.

Yet, a draw still looked within their capabilities and the rapid unravelling of that possibility came as a surprise.

In the eight overs before lunch, their top three departed.

Toby Albert copped a beauty from Hutton to fall for a fourth-ball duck, Ben Geddes fell victim to a fine, rapid-reaction catch by Slater at short leg off Paterson for one, and Ben Compton (8) was leg before to a swinging ball as the South African celebrated his second success.

Lunch did nothing to stiffen the away team’s resolve, Harry Finch (12) soon leg before as Hutton claimed his 50th of the season, before Leaning was caught behind off a bottom edge to make it 59-5.

Paterson had 21-year-old Evison caught low down at third slip and Matt Quinn on the boundary as a merrily brief innings of 12 ended with a top-edged pull.

Alex Blake (19) knew his fate immediately as he saw Mullaney readying himself for the catch as he heaved Hutton over midwicket and Singh, having launched Paterson for six over the leg side, perished next ball.

He was well caught by a diving Hutton at deep backward square, attempting a repeat.

The hosts’ two pacemen each took a breather after 10 overs but Kent's demise was quickly completed as Bhuiyan gave Haseeb Hameed's leg-breaks (0-1) a maiden first-class wicket.

Leaning, 29, said: “For three days, we were right up with them competing, and then for an hour and a half today, we were a mile away. It was pretty abysmal, if I’m honest.

“They bowled well, they got quite a few wickets from good bowling early doors, but ultimately, a few of us got ourselves out.

“But we had a young team out there and I thought we actually did pretty well to stay in the game as long as we did.

“If you take 10 players out of any side, it would look a very different team and those injuries have all come at once for us.

“We didn’t bowl as well as we should have on the first day after winning the toss in pretty favourable conditions. Nottinghamshire probably scored 100 more than they should have.

“But then, we scrapped well with the bat in the first innings. We had six scores between 30 and [Harry] Finchy’s 70 and it only takes one of them to get a hundred and another to go to 70 or 80, and we go past them by a hundred runs and it is a very different perspective when they come out to bat, second innings.

“As it was, they get a little lead and got off to a bit of a flyer and, then, it can be tough to get the game back in your court.

“But having said that, we are making too many mistakes as a team, regardless of which team we have put out ourselves, and we’ve got to put that right pretty quickly or we are going to find ourselves playing in Division 2 next season.

“On the positive side, we were in the same position last season and we ended up fifth. Cricket can be a funny game sometimes.

“We have a break for the 50-over competition now, where we are the defending champions.

“Nothing is a given. We need to make sure we get our heads right, go back to our solid plans that gave us success in the 50-over competition last year and stick to them, and stick together as a group because it is a tough time when failure keeps happening.

“You have to pick yourselves up and keep going and, ultimately, it will turn.

“Earlier in the season, when we had a break for the T20s, we came back with fresh impetus and, hopefully, that can happen again. And we can take some confidence into the final red-ball games.

“Hopefully, some of the injured players are not that far away from being ready to play again and we can come back in September and hit the ground running.”

The result capped a tough Friday for Kent, who had announced at lunch young wicketkeeper-batsman Jordan Cox is to leave at the end of the year, having turned down a new contract, to sign for Essex on a three-year deal.