In the space of three short weeks this season, Joe Leach, Oliver Hannon-Dalby and Kyle Abbott each ripped through Kent’s highquality, right-handed top order. It had been simple, really. Unerring accuracy, a slight angle in towards the stumps and then late lateral movement to find an outside edge or the knee roll of a front pad.
Leach turned the game for Worcestershire at New Road with first-innings figures of 6-52. Hannon-Dalby quite literally swung Warwickshire to victory at Edgbaston with a wonderful match return of 9-54. Within a week of that one, Abbott, Hampshire’s masterful South African, had inflicted further misery on Kent’s top order, and on the most placid of Canterbury pitches.