Leicestershire Foxes won by 40 runs

KENT ended their totesport League campaign and their 2005 season with a hugely disappointing 40-run defeat to Leicestershire Foxes in a rain interrupted clash at Grace Road on Sunday.

Chasing Leicestershire’s 45-over total of 280-5, Kent had reached 170-6 off 33 overs when bad light and rain bought a merciful end to another dire run chase by the Spitfires.

The final margin of defeat was determined under the Duckworth-Lewis rules.

Kent’s reply could not have got off to a worse start when the visitors lost young opening batsman Joe Denly for a first ball duck. Playing back to a Charl Willoughby in-swinger he was palpably leg before to bring in Martin van Jaarsveld for his last innings of the summer.

The South African made a slow start, however, and a short rain break made matters worse as Spitfires lost three overs to face a reduced target of 269 from 42 overs.

While Van Jaarsveld prodded around, Stevens, playing on his old home ground for the first time since joining Kent, clattered seven fours and a six on his way to a 37-ball half-century.

Some 55 were on the board, Stevens having contributed 50 and Van Jaarsveld two, but the introduction of slow left-arm spin from Dinesh Mongia proved Kent’s undoing.

Stevens (76) went back to an arm ball to go leg before then, in Mongia’s next over, Matt Walker skied a sweep to short fine leg.

England Under-19 seamer and academy tourist Stuart Broad then came on at the pavilion end and offered the ideal foil for Mongia.

He had Michael Carberry caught leg-side off a glance, then Neil Dexter edged an attempted run down to the keeper to leave Kent’s reply in tatters at 142-5.

Van Jaarsveld crawled to a 78-ball 50 and was unbeaten on 59 when rain ended his stay and another disappointing limited overs season for Kent.

Earlier, the Foxes’ impressive total was based around half-centuries from three of their top order and at one point there was a real danger that Spitfires would be chasing a total of more than 300.

An opening stand of 44 between John Saddler and Darren Maddy laid their foundations as both took advantage of some sloppy new ball bowling from Amjad Khan and Martin Saggers.

Khan, marginally the better of the two, broke the partnership by having Saddler caught at short extra-cover but only bowled five of his allocation of nine overs.

Maddy went on to notch his sixth half-century of the totesport campaign from 74 balls but he then latched onto a half-volley from former team-mate Stevens only to lash it to Van Jaarsveld at mid-off to make it 125-2.

The highlight of the innings followed with an enterprising stand of 96 in 15 overs between overseas stars Hylton Ackerman and Mongia, broken when Dexter bowled Ackerman when attempting an audacious late cut.

After a 44-ball half-century Mongia pulled a Matt Dennington long-hop straight to Carberry at deep mid-wicket but the Foxes powered on through former Kent favourite Paul Nixon (29) and ex-England bat Aftab Habib (22) to set a daunting target.

Dexter had the pick of the bowling figures with 2-33, but otherwise this was a bowling and fielding display that Kent will prefer to gloss over and a game they would do best to forget.