CANTERBURY suffered their first defeat of the Shepherd Neame KCL first division campaign after a disappointing all-round performance at Orpington.

Despite a battling 46 from Caiden Lang and a valuable 27 from Paul Steer, the visitors were rushed out for 150 inside 46 overs with Stephen Ingram bagging 5-35 and Wessells Wolmarans 3-42.

In the field Ben Cooper’s mid-innings burst of 5-30 and a useful 2-48 from Tim Wren gave Canterbury hope of snatching and away victory from the jaws of defeat, but Orpington held their nerve through Paul Sheddon (44) and Sanjay Patel (50) to ease home at 152-8 to win by two wickets with seven balls to spare.

Afterwards a disappointed Wren said: “We were comfortably losing at one point, fought back to give ourselves half a chance of winning it, only to go down in the end.

“We showed a lot of character to come back as we did to be honest because at the start of the day we’d lost the toss and got stuck in on a wet one.

“I felt 150 was a decent score, a respectable total on that and Caiden and Paul had batter well, but we didn’t bat out our overs and that proved crucial.”

Wren added: “Sheddon dogged it out for his 40 and Sanjay at No. 3 batted really well for his runs and at 100-1 they were winning it easily, but Ben got us back into the frame only for them to win in the 54th over, which, was in the four overs we gave them.

“When you’ve got a ‘lowish’ score you really can’t afford to give them too many overs because although it’s a difficult pitch at Orpington they know how best to bat on it.

“You have to learn from stuff like that, the dressing room wasn’t too quiet afterwards because things just didn’t go our way all day.”

This Saturday Canterbury, who now lie fourth in Division 1, welcome seventh-placed Whitstable to Polo Farm.