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ScorecardSam Billings arrived back from England duty at 3am, but couldn’t save the day for his county•Getty Images

Around 3am this morning, Sam Billings checked into Kent’s team hotel in Bromley. He had just completed the long drive down from Old Trafford, where he had been 12th man during England’s T20 defeat against Pakistan, and not released until after the game had been completed.After five hours’ sleep, Billings arrived at Beckenham to prepare himself for the third day of Kent’s Championship match with Northamptonshire. He netted for several hours, readjusting to the red ball after training for several days against the white ball – in vain as it turned out.At 10.55 this morning, Billings walked out to the crease after the dismissal of Sam Northeast, Kent’s batting totem all season. Kent were 22 for 5 and still trailed by 132 runs. They had to clear that deficit, and add another 200 runs or so, if they were to have a chance of gaining the victory their season depended on. It was time for a returning hero.Initially, Billings did not seem like one. He edged his very first ball, from the relentlessly probing Ben Sanderson, through the slips, and a couple of other boundaries followed from edges. Yet there were glimpses – a cut off Sanderson, an extra-cover drive off Azharullah – that Billings’ late night drive would be vindicated, and he would be the hero Kent needed.In the last over before lunch, Billings shaped to drive, and then pulled his bat away: as if he had thought he was playing a T20, only to remind himself at the last split-second that this was a first-class game. The indecision proved fatal: Billings’ did not lift his bat up in time, and the ball took an inside edge to uproot his off stump. As he trudged off, the fate of this game went with him. His efforts had been to no avail.Kent could certainly feel aggrieved. By reducing Division One to eight teams from next year, and allowing only one team to win promotion this season, the ECB had already hampered their chances of returning to the top tier for the first time since 2010, before plucking their best young batsman away from such a crucial fixture.Given that there are those who think that Billings could one day play in Test cricket too, it is debatable whether he learned as much from training with the England squad for two days than he would have done from playing a full part in the most important Championship game yet in Kent’s season.A few hours later, Kent had to accept that a season’s worth of fine Championship cricket would not be enough to secure promotion. A fourth successive victory would have kept up the pressure on Essex, ahead of what could have been a winner-takes-all showdown at Canterbury next week. But instead this three-day defeat effectively scuppered them. Five points from their game in hand, against Glamorgan on Monday, will put Essex out of reach come what may.Northants, meanwhile, could celebrate their win with a raucous sing-song. They had not merely beaten the second-placed side in Division Two; they had thumped them. If their first-innings total of 384 was underpinned by a brilliant double hundred from Ben Duckett, well-supported by Alex Wakely, then they showed the depth of their bowling stocks to take Kent’s 20 wickets for a cost of just 414 in the match.Rory Kleinveldt bowled superbly all match, swinging the ball late to claim eight wickets, but he had a coterie of fine support acts. Steven Crook took four wickets in the match, including the critical blows of Hardus Viljoen, driving once too often after a 63 that had been laced with powerful shots down the ground, and Billings in consecutive overs before lunch. Sanderson was remorseless in his line and length. And Rob Keogh, who will surely never replicate his nine-wicket haul last week, again suggested that he can be more than a serviceable offspinner.Northants’ sense of optimism is palpable. A year that has brought a second T20 Blast victory in four seasons, and a quarter-final spot in the Royal London One-Day Cup, has now yielded consecutive Championship victories. This was, in Wakely’s belief, a complete performance. While the upturn in Northants’ Championship form has come far too late for a tilt at promotion, he reckoned that was no bad thing. “Promotion would have been too early for us, with where we are as a squad,” he said.David Ripley, the head coach, left Beckenham early to return to Wantage Road. Tonight the ground will host an Extraordinary General Meeting, where members will be asked to vote to cede control of the club to a limited company, NCCC Holdings, to generate more investment. Wakely is among those who supports the move, believing that it will enable Northants to replicate the success of Northampton Saints, who became an incorporated company in 2000 and have been able to invest more in their squad and sporting facilities since.While Northants “went nowhere” after winning the T20 Blast in 2013, Wakely is convinced that this time can be different.And the most obvious reason of all for optimism lies in Ben Duckett who, rather inevitably, scored the winning run: he is on the brink of signing a new contract. Wakely reckons that he can be as good as AB de Villiers, and urged England to take him to Bangladesh. “He needs to be fast-tracked into the England team, as Joe Root was,” he said. “Who knows how good he can be?”

Pakistan have been fined for maintaining a slow over rate during their victory over England in the fourth Test at The Oval.Misbah-ul-Haq’s side were found to be one over short, after time allowances were taken into consideration by the umpires and match referee. Misbah accepted the charge and was fined 20% of his match fee, while the Pakistan players were fined 10%.This was Misbah’s first over-rate offence within a 12-month period but the penalty will remain on his record and he could face suspension if Pakistan commit another breach.Pakistan’s win ensured they would share the series 2-2 with England and gives them a chance of being ranked the No. 1 Test side, depending on results in Sri Lanka and the West Indies.

David Warner, patient? In Sri Lanka, he knows he needs to be. Almost two years since his last Test hundred overseas, Warner is emphasising long innings and strike rotation as the keys to Australia’s success in Sri Lanka, and also in India next year.Not since a century in the first Test against Pakistan in Dubai in October 2014 has Warner topped three figures away from home ports, scoring minimally in the West Indies last year and then squandering plenty of starts in the Ashes as he tried to adapt his game. While conscious of not losing his natural attacking instincts, Warner said there would need to be more nuance to the way the Australia’s top order confronts Sri Lanka’s spin bowlers in particular.”The challenge for us is about batting long periods of time,” Warner said in Pallekele. “We know that’s what wins games in these conditions. You’ve got to be able to bat well into the next day and that’s the focus for us. It’s about adapting to these conditions, adapting to the things that are thrown at us and we have to take those challenges. It’s not about challenging specific bowlers. There are times in games when you might need to apply some pressure.”You’ve got to be patient enough. You’ve got to rotate the strike. Your patience comes with hitting your four-balls, your boundary balls. They’re the ones you’ve got to really wait on. That’s what we’re talking about with patience in this game, especially over here. You’ve got to bite the bullet.”[Rotating the strike] is the key, especially with a right-hand, left-hand combination, to try to mix it up a bit with the bowlers. These days a lot of teams either have a left-arm orthodox [spinner] or a right-arm offie. You’ve always got to try to rotate the strike and that’s the most important thing when it comes to playing spin or playing fast bowlers as well. Try to put the bowlers off a little bit.”Asked about his lack of hundreds away from home in recent times, Warner said he would be trying to balance attack and defence. “I always try my best,” he said. “If I have to bat for a day or a day-and-a-half, I go out there and I try to do that. But the element of my game is to try to score runs. I try to apply pressure on the bowlers and that has always been my game plan. That’s what I always set out to do and I probably won’t change that. It has been a while since I’ve scored a hundred outside the country. We’ve got to start well, bat long periods of time.”Tactically, Warner is expecting the series to be fought on an attritional basis at times, as the Australians try to adapt to a slower Asian Test match tempo while Sri Lanka set defensive fields and seek to prey on the visitors’ patience. “You’re going to have to be prepared for some boring fields. Both teams are going to use that,” he said. “You’re going to have your sweepers out there, especially for the spinners. You are going to have your fielders in the deep, so you have to be prepared to get your runs in ones and twos.”Whoever is the fittest team will probably win the games. It can be like that in these conditions. Unless you’re going to blast them out of the park with the bat or your quicks somehow manage to go through them on low tracks, it is going to be a big grind. It is going to be a big grind. That’s where the spinners play a big role.”Warner believes the IPL experience has helped him approach spin better•BCCI

Warner excelled as a captain earlier this year when he led Sunrisers Hyderabad to their first IPL title. As deputy to Steven Smith for Australia, he is looking to provide an example to players further down the order, making use of the Indian experience he has gleaned over the past decade. Tellingly, he said that practice pitches were often more useful than the strips used for matches.”Times have changed. It’s a bit different,” Warner said of how his methods against spin had evolved. “That’s the fortunate thing for us to go over and play IPL. I’ve been over for eight years, nine years in a row now. It’s the experience you gain from training on the wickets there, you can actually use that to your advantage. Yes it’s a white ball, but still the conditions and the surfaces, once they deteriorate, get quite challenging.”In that form of the game, you have to try to score. So it gives you a bit of an advantage to actually, one, look to score but then improvise as well when you play Test cricket. The game’s about moving forward and we try to get on with the game and try to score. It gives you an advantage to look for those scoring options rather than just trying to survive. But then again, it does suit you in certain areas to get back in your crease and use your feet to survive as well.”Nathan Lyon and Steve O’Keefe have trained with near-new balls in the nets at Pallakele, and Warner said there would be times when both sides throw the ball to the spinners early on. “A lot of teams have done that in the past in subcontinent conditions – we also saw that with Pakistan in the UAE,” he said.”I think the harder the ball, the more inconsistency with spin and variation and that’s probably the main thing that skippers like to use. Plus the bounce. I think you’ll see that more in the second innings of the game; in the first innings, you probably won’t see it too much unless we’re trying to dry up one end for both teams.”Warner is entering the series with a fractured finger in the final stages of healing after he broke it during the ODI series in the West Indies. This is added to the thumb he has broken more than once, meaning he needs special reinforcement in his gloves and can expect to be dealing with pain when he bats and also, at times, in the field. Usman Khawaja has been practising to field in the slips, but Warner will be closer to the bat for the spinners, either at leg slip or second slip.”It’s going well at the moment. A couple of times when I’ve hit on the toe [of the bat] it’s been a bit painful,” Warner said. “I’ve experienced that before with the thumb but just with the game moving forward I’ll do the same thing I did with the thumb – put a guard over the top that’s underneath the glove and has a bit of silicon feel to it and stops a bit of vibration. But I should be ready to go.”

A cohort of South Africa’s Test players will begin their preparations for the floodlit Test against Australia later in the year by facing the pink ball in the A-team series in Brisbane.The opening four-day game against Australia A at Allan Border Field will be a first experience of facing the pink ball in first-class for the South Africans, albeit this match will be in daytime conditions.The South Africa A squad includes nine Test players, including captain Stephen Cook who made his Test debut against England in January, with some of them having a good chance of being in the squad for the full of Australia tour which starts in October and includes South Africa’s first day-night Test in Adelaide from November 24.The other Test players on this tour are Dean Elgar, Temba Bavuma, Wayne Parnell, Vernon Philander, Dane Piedt, Stiaan van Zyl, Dane Vilas and Hardus Viljoen. Elgar and Bavuma are established in the Test line-up while Piedt is currently the frontline spinner.There had been initial reluctance from the South Africans to play a Test under lights with a lack of preparation and experience in such conditions being a major factor. However, after much behind-the-scenes work an agreement was reached to mean that Australia will host two day-night Tests in their season with Pakistan also playing under lights at the Gabba in December.”The guys are really on a high and looking forward to the first game,” Cook said. “It will be the first time the guys play with the pink ball in a first-class match, so the guys have prepared for that and are very excited about that.The second match of the series will be played in Townsville from August 6-9, before a one-day series that also involves India A, Australia A and a National Performance Squad begins on August 13.

Bipul Sharma’s four-wicket haul set up Mohammedan Sporting Club‘s six-wicket win against Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club in a match shortened by rain in Mirpur. The win confirmed Mohammedan’s place in the Super League, as they finished on top of the points table with 14 points. Dhanmondi’s hopes of a top-six finish ended, although they kept themselves safe from relegation, finishing their campaign with 10 points.A wet pitch delayed the start by two hours, after which Mohammedan decided to bowl in the 42-overs-a-side game.In the first over, pacer Nazmul Hossain removed Abdullah Al Mamun with a snorter that was easily caught by Naeem Islam, who walked back a few steps from his position at first slip. Mahbubul Karim, who top scored with 29, and Marshall Ayub added 56 for the second wicket before both batsmen fell quickly.Nazmus Sadat and captain Mahmudullah added 42 for the fifth wicket, before Zabid Hossain and tail-ender Shafiul Islam added a further 45 for the eighth, in only 6.2 overs, as Dhanmondi finished on 187 for 8.Bipul took 4 for 24 while Nazmul, Habibur Rahman, Shubashis Roy and Naeem Islam jnr picked up one each.Mohammedan also lost an early wicket in their reply, when left-arm spinner Abdur Rahman had Ezaz Ahmed caught and bowled in the second over. His opening partner Habibur was also caught and bowled, by Mahmudullah, but Mushfiqur Rahim dropped anchor and added 73 runs for the third wicket with Naeem Islam. Both batsmen scored fifties to give Mohammedan a strong base in the chase.Thereafter, Mushfiqur and Bipul added 70 runs for the fourth wicket, the partnership taking Mohammedan within seven runs of victory. Mushfiqur was unbeaten on 66 off 82 balls with seven fours and two sixes. Bipul struck three fours and two sixes in his 25-ball 34.Mahmudullah signed off the season with returns of 3 for 52.The match between Legends of Rupganj and Brothers Union was called off early and moved to the reserve day, Thursday, due to a “wet pitch,” according to the Cricket Committee of Dhaka Metropolis, the BCB standing committee that runs the DPL.

Mumbai, Saurashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Kerala have filled up the last four automatic qualification spots for the quarter-final stage of the Vijay Hazare Trophy. They join Gujarat, Andhra, and Karnataka, who had sealed qualification on Sunday by topping their respective groups. The eighth quarter-finalist will be decided by a playoff between Delhi, who finished eighth on the combined Elite division points table, and Uttarakhand, who finished as toppers of the Plate group.This season’s format has the top-placed teams of the five Elite division groups qualifying automatically, alongside the top two teams on points from a combined Elite division table. Mumbai won their last Group D game by 200 runs against Himachal Pradesh to finish top with five wins in five games, while Saurashtra stayed on top of Group E with 16 points despite their first loss of the season to Services.For the other two automatic qualification spots, the teams in contention were UP and Kerala (both from Group C with 16 points), Baroda (Group A, 16 points) and Delhi (Group D, 16 points). Baroda lost out to Delhi on net run-rate, while UP’s and Kerala’s vastly superior NRRs ensured they qualified as the sixth- and seventh-placed teams.The Plate division, which plays as one group, had two teams – Uttarakhand and Assam – finish with five wins in five games. But Uttarakhand’s NRR in excess of +3 was far too much for Assam to better on the final day of the league stage. As a result, it will be Uttarakhand who play Delhi for the last quarter-final spot.Group D
Mumbai began the day all-but-qualified, on 16 points with an NRR boosted by their explosiveness against Puducherry last week. They fell to 49 for 4 against HP after electing to bat and it took three of their most senior players – Suryakumar Yadav (91 off 75), Aditya Tare (83 off 98) and Shardul Thakur (92 off 57) – to not only rescue them but put them far beyond the reach of HP, who folded for 121 in a chase of 322. Legspinner Prashant Solanki, in his debut season for the Mumbai senior team, took 4 for 32 to take his tally to 11 wickets in three matches. Left-arm spinner Shams Mulani took 3 for 42, including the wicket that ended the game.Delhi‘s bowlers arrested Rajasthan‘s charge in the slog overs and bowled them out for 294, before an unbeaten 117 from Himmat Singh, and his unbroken 183-run stand with Nitish Rana (88 off 75) helped them win by eight wickets with more than five overs to spare. Rajasthan had been on course for bigger runs on the back of Manender Singh’s 73 and Arjit Gupta’s 51-ball 78 before Simarjeet Singh (4 for 36) and Pradeep Sangwan (3 for 62) intervened.In the only other Group D match, Maharashtra‘s Yash Nahar made 119 to end his maiden List A season with 390 runs in five matches. That knock in a big partnership with Ankit Bawne, who made 110, and Rahul Tripathi’s 30-ball 59, combined to help Maharasthra put up 333 for 4 and win by 137 runs. Kedar Jadhav bowled a 10-over spell that went for 34 and got him two wickets.Nitish Rana will hope to continue his form against Uttarakhand in the upcoming knockout match for Delhi•BCCI

Group E
A career-best 158 for Rahul Singh Gahlaut helped Services pick up their second win of the season, and upset of table-toppers Saurashtra. After being put in and falling to 26 for 4, it took a 182-run stand between Gahlaut and wicketkeeper Devender Lochab (64 off 86) to lift Services past 200. They scored at more than ten an over in the last eight overs, a 21-ball 43 from former Delhi allrounder Pulkit Narang helping them get to 301 for 7. Saurashtra’s middle order collapsed in chase, courtesy of left-arm spinner Rahul Khajan Singh’s 4 for 45, and medium-pacer Varun Choudhary’s 3 for 62. They fell short by 68 runs with about seven overs to spare.Meanwhile, Jammu & Kashmir made light work of chasing down Chandigarh‘s 241. Shubham Khajuria’s 120 off 86 balls, and Henan Nazir’s – playing only his second game – unbeaten 110 off 88 balls formed a partnership of 183 that came in fewer than 24 overs as they won with eight wickets and 16 overs to spare. Umar Nazir, Parvez Rasool, and Auqib Nabi had previously taken three wickets each.Bengal‘s campaign ended with a loss to Haryana at the Eden Gardens. All five of Haryana’s bowlers were among the wickets, led by Sanjay Pahal’s 3 for 32, as the hosts folded for 177. In response, Haryana had fifties from both openers – Chaitanya Bishnoi and Shubham Rohilla – anchoring different parts of their chase as they won by five wickets. They did, however, finish bottom of the table.Plate divisionLeft-handed Kamal Singh made his first ton in senior cricket to help Uttarakhand post 306 against Sikkim. Sikkim’s response never took off, and they ended their campaign with the aim to bat out 50 overs – which they did, finishing on 161 for 6.In the other Plate matches, Assam and Meghalya followed similar templates – putting up scores in excess of 300 and winning by 83 and 182 runs respectively against Manipur and Mizoram.The only match to buck that trend involved Nagaland chasing down 287 with eight wickets and just about as many overs to spare. Captain Rongsen Jonathan and Shrikant Mundhe both made centuries, while allrounder Stuart Binny capped his 100th List A game with a 37-ball 55 to see them home against Arunachal Pradesh, who had been fueled by an unbeaten 138 from Rahul Dalal earlier.