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Scorecard Sam Northeast reached a composed half-century during the final session of the match•PA Photos

The South African bowlers were unable to take a wicket on their final outing ahead of the first Test against England at The Oval next week. Kent’s openers, Sam Northeast and Daniel Bell-Drummond, aged 22 and 18 respectively, combated them impressively for the second time in the match as the pair put on 105 in 22 overs to keep the likely Test attack at bay.It means South Africa’s preparations for the first Test have not been without problems. Earlier they lost five wickets for 49 runs against largely unthreatening Kent bowlers although there was useful time in the middle for a number of their batsmen. Jacques Rudolph was the third player to score a half-century, after Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis did so in the morning session, but the lower order flagged at the end.It took the visitors 27 balls before they scored their first run of the morning as Ivan Thomas and Simon Cook showed discipline without threatening. Amla dabbed a Thomas delivery into the off side and scurried through for a single to open the morning’s account but he showed more aggression with back-foot punch past point to bring up his fifty, the second for him on the trip after the 64 he made against Somerset.It was only when Alex Riley, the offspinner, was brought on that South Africa pushed on the scoring rate. Kallis greeted him with a drive through the covers and then charged down the pitch next ball. Kallis missed but so too did Sam Billings as the stumping opportunity was not taken and Kallis reached his 50 in the same over, in which he hit Riley for two more boundaries.Runs came more easily after that, particularly off Charlie Shreck, and the pair batted for a further six overs, by which time they both looked comfortable. At the end of 55th they retired at the same time, Amla on 77 and Kallis on 54, to allow the other batsmen time in the middle.AB de Villiers adopted the same aggressive approach that he employed in Taunton but it did not pay off. After hitting three fours he went for a pull off Matt Coles and was caught in the deep by Bell-Drummond shortly before lunch.Rudolph was more circumspect and resumed after the break with a confident-looking JP Duminy, who is likely to start the first Test at No.7 following the loss of Mark Boucher. Duminy was particularly assured against spin and hit Riley for a straight six over his head.Kent took the second new ball as soon as it became available and needed fewer than six overs to have success when Duminy went for a booming drive off Thomas and played on. Vernon Philander was next in and needed to spend time at the crease after a brief stay at Taunton, but he lasted only two balls before edging to second slip. Riley claimed the catch immediately but the umpires met to discuss whether the ball had carried to him and after consultation decided that it was clean.The South Africans lost a third wicket for just 17 runs when Dale Steyn was given out lbw to Riley although Steyn stood his ground despite the confident appeal and seemed to think he had hit the ball.Rudolph continued stoically and brought up his fifty off 114 balls with a well-placed hook before scooping the next delivery back to Riley. South Africa were due to end their innings after 100 overs but were effectively bowled out when Morne Morkel was trapped lbw with Kallis and Amla now registered as retired out.Morkel was given the new ball which he shared with Philander but neither could make anything happen as the Kent opening pair left well and attacked the loose deliveries. Even Steyn could not breakthrough; Northeast drove him through the covers off the first ball he bowled.While Bell-Drummond looked the more assured of the two for large parts of the innings, Northeast was the more aggressive and he was the one to bring up a half-century with a lofted shot over mid-on. Bell-Drummond drove well throughout but finished two runs short of a well-deserved fifty and both gave the South African bowlers plenty to think about in London.

ScorecardGloucestershire gave their CB40 campaign a boost after an impressive performance with bat and ball by Will Gidman helped them record a crushing 109-run victory over Worcestershire at New Road.Gidman, the 27-year-old all-rounder, made his first limited-overs half-century in Gloucestershire’s total of 238 for 6 and then took 2 for 10 as the Royals limped to 129 all out after losing half their side for just 25.Worcestershire’s lowest 40-over score of 86 was looking some way off until left handers James Cameron (35) and Gareth Andrew (23) mustered a face-saving partnership of 46 with the help of a couple of fielding lapses by Gloucestershire.The failure of the front-line batsman was due to good, accurate seam bowling and a sluggish pitch which consistently shackled the stroke-makers. When Vikram Solanki drove to mid-on in Gidman’s third over, he set the pattern for a dramatic collapse.Moeen Ali edged a flashing drive off James Fuller and Phil Hughes, after successive CB40 centuries against county opposition, was one of two victims in a lively spell by left-arm seamer David Payne.Cameron was the only specialist batsman to survive for any length of time but he was brilliantly caught by Kane Williamson, back-pedalling towards long on for off-spinner Jack Taylor’s first success in a spell of 2 for 21.Earlier, it was the Gidman brothers, with fifties of contrasting styles, who underpinned a Gloucestershire innings that came to life when the last seven overs produced 64 runs. Left-hander Will continued his adjustment to a new role as a one-day opener with only three fours in making 76 from 98 balls and Alex launched the late surge with a 6-4-4-6 sequence off successive deliveries from Andrew.Those were the first boundaries in 16 overs as Gloucestershire finally tired of picking off singles on the stodgy surface.Hamish Marshall’s early rush was quickly halted when he scooped a straightforward catch to deep square leg and Benny Howell was barely under way when Hughes held a more difficult chance at point.Both wickets fell to the emerging left-arm seamer Jack Shantry, and at the end of the innings he took his CB40 tally to 14 wickets in six games this season after yorking Alex Gidman for 59. Shantry also bowled Ian Cockbain for a full return of 4 for 37 but Worcestershire’s support bowlers had limited success.Daryl Mitchell had Williamson (29) caught at deep midwicket from his third ball and Moeen was on target when Will Gidman heaved across the line after a stand of 97 with his brother.The victory was Gloucestershire’s third from five Group A matches this season, with Worcestershire slumping to their third defeat from six games.

ScorecardJames Anderson recovered from illness to take 5 for 82 but Lancashire still face a third defeat in four games•Getty Images

Having taken 77 years to add a ninth County Championship to the eight they had won outright up to 1934, Lancashire are in danger of seeing their hard-earned spoils slip through their grasp even before summer is ushered in.With a vicious wind howling around the pillars of the half-built stands at the relocated Statham End, the fielders retreated to the shelter of the temporary dressing rooms amid fading light with Lancashire almost certainly facing a third defeat in four matches.Chasing a target of 328 to win, secured when James Anderson took his fourth and fifth wickets with consecutive balls, Lancashire slumped to 38 for 5, to which they had added one more run when the umpires, Rob Bailey and Steve Gale, decided it was too grim to continue. It was a judgement on the hue of the sky above but it might have been about the state of Lancashire’s cricket.They have endured a wretched match, one way or another, from the injury to Tom Smith and the afflictions of Anderson, interspersed with some untimely dropped catches and bedevilled by an opposing team whose application and skill levels have largely outstripped theirs.Anderson, in the event, set them a good example, defying the lingering symptoms of the cold virus that laid him low on Thursday with a performance that was decent enough, in the circumstances, to suggest that England, for whom selector James Whitaker was in attendance, will conclude that this one match is enough for him to be ready for the Test series against the West Indies.He had looked ready on Wednesday, in truth, when the 17 overs he bowled either side of a trip to hospital with a damaged thumb deserved better than a wicketless analysis. As so often is the way, he bowled less well with greater success in Nottinghamshire’s second innings, even if the figures suggest the opposite.Not that there was any surprise in that. Having felt so ill on Thursday that he could bowl only one over he was hardly likely to be feeling at his best – only “70 per cent”, in his words, and craving sleep and tomato soup. He thanked Mick Newell and Chris Read in the Nottinghamshire hierarchy for allowing him to bowl on the third morning, after it had emerged that the umpires had been wrong to tell him on Thursday that his requirement to field for as long a time period as he had been off the field would be cancelled at the start of a new day.Newell, Nottinghamshire’s director of cricket, said it had been “the right thing to do” even though he could have insisted that the letter of the law be applied.”It was only fair because he had made the effort to get on the field on Thursday afternoon, thinking that he needed to be out there for an hour and a half so he could bowl first thing today,” Newell said. “It wasn’t his fault that the umpires told him he could go off again. It was an honest mistake and we thought that letting him bowl was the right thing to do.”The deliveries he produced to dismiss Michael Lumb and Chris Read, which denied Nottinghamshire an even stronger position, might have given them cause to regret their generosity. Anderson had his revenge, too, on Graeme Swann, after his first-ball dismissal to the England off-spinner. But these were rare moments of encouragement for Lancashire.They dropped catches at important moments, or rather Paul Horton did, at first slip, when he put down Read on 29 off Glen Chapple and James Taylor on 38 off Anderson. It would be unfair to blame one player, though. In reality, they were denied by the application shown by Read, Michael Lumb and the Nottinghamshire middle order in general on a pitch that rewarded hard graft, significantly against the second new ball, which they not only survived for an hour after lunch until Taylor was caught behind off Simon Kerrigan, but added 70 runs in doing so in a partnership for the fifth wicket worth a critical 100 runs.Lancashire looked powerless to change the way the match was drifting away from them and you wondered whether Andre Adams, whose magical bowling has brought him nine wickets in the match so far, had a point the other day when, intriguingly, he suggested, mindful of Nottinghamshire’s failure to follow up on their 2010 Championship-winning season, that to defend a title “you have to know how you won it”.Adams, who finished with 7 for 32 in the first innings, took two more on Friday, bowling Stephen Moore, defending on the front foot, with an inswinger preceded by two outswingers, before having Steven Croft caught behind with another that went away.It followed a significantly improved opening spell from Stuart Broad, another in pre-Test warm-up mode, who went for 60 runs from 14 wicketless overs in the first innings but struck with his second ball to have the unfortunate Horton caught at second slip and then pinned Karl Brown in the crease. Swann, the third of the Test regulars on duty, claimed the key wicket of Ashwell Prince for the second time in the match.

Sourav Ganguly, the Bengal captain, was forced to sit out of his team’s quarter-final clash against Baroda in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy due to a hamstring injury. Ganguly sustained the injury during an exhibition match in Dubai while playing for the Marylebone Cricket Club against Lancashire on March 23.The injury, however, will not have an impact on Ganguly’s preparation for the IPL, a Sahara Pune Warriors official told ESPNcricinfo. Ganguly was recently named captain of the Warriors for the IPL’s fifth season and he will also double up as a team mentor in the absence of a head coach.Deep Dasgupta, the Bengal chairman of selectors, said Ganguly, who flew back to Kolkata from Dubai, will be available for selection should Bengal qualify for the semi-final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in Mumbai. Manoj Tiwary is leading Bengal in Ganguly’s absence.

Azhar Mahmood, the former Pakistan allrounder, has been granted an Indian visa for the IPL but ESPNcricinfo understands it is valid only for Chandigarh and Delhi. Mahmood will arrive on Saturday to play for Kings XI Punjab but will be available only for five games in Chandigarh, at their home ground in Mohali, and one match against Delhi Daredevils in Delhi.Mahmood, who is now a British citizen and plays for Kent, was bought by the franchise at the auction last February for $200,000. He was expected to be available for selection from the beginning of the IPL season but visa delays led him to miss Kings XI’s first three matches.However, his arrival will boost Kings XI, who suffered a setback when England allrounder Stuart Broad was ruled out of the entire IPL season due to a calf strain.Adam Gilchrist, the Kings XI captain, had announced Mahmood’s imminent arrival at the media briefing in Mohali after the game against Pune Warriors India on Thursday. Mahmood, who is the only player in this IPL to have played for Pakistan, tweeted to confirm the development.Kings XI suffered successive defeats in their first two matches, both away games. Back then Gilchrist had made public his disappointment about not having Mahmood at his disposal, saying Kings XI were missing out on a “class” player.A consistent allrounder in Twenty20 cricket, Mahmood has been one of the top performers for Kent. He was player of the season for Kent in the County Championship last year and finished as the county’s highest run-getter in the domestic T20 tournament, with 485 runs, including a century, from 15 games at a strike-rate of 143.91.

ScorecardThough UAE put up a much better batting effort in their second innings, their overnight lead of 81, with three wickets in hand, may not give them much comfort going into the final day. After the top order put on fifty-plus stands, they failed to stretch their lead as Scotland hit back with late wickets to give them the edge.UAE’s overnight pair of Arshad Ali and Ahmed Raza resumed on 74 for 2 and added a further 44 before Majid Haq removed Raza. The fourth wicket stand of 96 was UAE’s best, between Arshad and Saqib Ali. Arshad made a patient 71, off 238 balls, before he was dismissed by Haq, shortly after UAE wiped out the deficit.Saqib and Khurram Khan then put together another half-century stand. However, a double-strike by Gordon Goudie, the right-arm seamer, in one over, brought Scotland right back into the contest. He trapped both Khurram and Amjad Ali lbw, and four overs later dismissed the well-set Saqib for 77. Saqib hit ten fours in his 192-ball knock.It was left to the tail-end pair of Fayyaz Ahmed and Amjad Javed to put up a fight.