Monday, 17 June 2019.

 at the wonderful neville park, royal tunbridge wells, for county championship devision 1 cricket. 

kent, 6th on 49 poins, vs notts, rock bottom on 34" 

both teams have struggled since they both won promotion last term, although notts will argueabley be more disappointed than kent with their start following their usual raft of winter signings. 

my first visit to the tunbridge wells cricket festival. 

and, the first sunshine i've seen for 3 weeks. 

so, you can imagine how excited i am at the combination of cricket and sun in a marvelous venue. 

kent batting first following an uncontested toss. 

only one team relegated this year with the top devision increasing to ten teams. lunch at a glorious neville park and notts's morning with kent having subsided to 105 for 5. 

2 wickets apiece for luke fletcher, james pattinson and jake ball. 

zack crawley, the only one of the kent batsmen to provide any resistance, 54 not out. 

bellebelle drummand, 8, heimu kheun 9, shaun dixon, 4, ashes hopeful joe denley 8 and oli robinson, 7, all falling cheaply. 

crawley's scoring rate has drumatically slowed of late, so i will be encouraging him to get a move on, if this trend continues into the afternoon session. close of play at neville park and notts are 30 for no loss in reply to kent's 309 . 

after lunch, camron stewart, 59 took the spitfires to 224 for 6 before he was out. 

3 quick wickets fell quickly includding the stowickk zack crawley for a splendid tunn. 

but, a tremendous last wicket stand of over 50 between harry podmore, last out on 49, and matt mills, 12 not out saw kent to respectability and a 2nd batting bonus point. 

but notts openers survived the potentially triccky last 45 mins with no loss. 

crowd a shade under an impressive 3000. 

glorious sunshine, the first i've seen for 3 weeks, enthralling cricket, and a real ale tent has made for a tremendous day of cricket for yours truely.