KENT Spitfires ensured their National League relegation dogfight will go to the final day of the season after an emphatic eight-wicket win over fellow strugglers Leicestershire Foxes.

Kent dominated their penultimate Division 1 game on a Grace Road green top yesterday to take the survival race down to the wire and next Sunday’s clash with Warwickshire at St Lawrence.

Coming just two days after their worst display of the summer in the corresponding championship match, Kent duly lifted their performance levels to out-class a weary host side.

It was hard to tell the prepared strip from the remainder of the emerald green square as the captain’s tossed up, so little wonder David Fulton elected to bowl first.

With Martin Saggers hampered by a neck strain, Amjad Khan was asked to play the senior bowlers’ role and duly obliged with career-best league figures of four for 26 as Leicestershire were shot out for 98 in 35.1 overs.

Bowling with pace and an accuracy that had deserted him in the three-day championship defeat, Khan sent back Darren Maddy and John Sadler with balls that squeezed through the gate to dislodge the off bail.

John Maunders played around an in-swinger to go leg before and Brad Hodge lost middle stump having been beaten for pace, as Khan bagged four for three in the space of 13 balls.

Andrew Symonds winkled out the experienced Jeremy Snape with a shooting off-cutter and Muttiah Muralitharan chipped in with the scalp of home skipper Phil DeFreitas, caught bat-pad at silly point.

The wiliest Fox of all, Paul Nixon, did his best to salvage what he could from the tatters of an innings and looked fairly comfortable in scoring his top-scoring 32.

His problem was Mark Ealham, who replaced Khan down the Bennett End slope, proved nigh-on unplayable in returning season’s best figures of four for 19.

He had rookie Luke Wright caught behind off an out-swinger and trapped Vasbert Drakes flush in front as the West Indies all-rounder pushed out half-heartedly.

Ex-Kent team-mate David Masters lost his leg-stump driving, then Nixon saw the same wicket uprooted as he attempted a cross-bat yahoo as Leicestershire posted their worst league score in three years.

Kent’s Ed Smith (1) and pinch-hitter Khan (5) fell early in the reply, but Rob Key, with an unbeaten 44 from 60 balls, teamed up with Symonds to see Kent to victory with 25 overs to spare.

Symonds, with an unbeaten 45 from 40 balls, took three fours off Masters’ opening over and finished the job with a six and a four off Maddy to set up next weekend’s Canterbury showdown with the Warwickshire Bears.