Derbyshire v Kent day 3

Another terrific day for Derbyshire today, as we ended up by declaring 300 runs ahead and only four wickets down.

A magnificent double century by the skipper was almost matched by his first for the county by Garry Park, who followed the old maxim of "drinking at the well" when in the groove by making a fine unbeaten 178, a career best score eclipsing his previous best for Durham against Yorkshire.

Greg Smith "failed" with 59 and Wavell gave it a quick slap with 18 before John Sadler came in at a crisis, 483-4...

It was good to see Sads getting a few runs and scoring at a run a ball, but park has highlighted his talent today. There were a few doubters, but I've not been one of them. When you sign a young player who can obviously bat, but has not yet realised his full potential, can bowl useful medium pace, keep wicket and field as well as anyone in the country, the chances are that you're on to a winner. I think this will be the start of something good for Park and I look forward to more of the same in the years ahead.

As for the skipper, he was like the Duracell bunny, just going on and on and on...

The boys are in a good position tonight but be honest, if we've made 583-4, the chances are there's nothing wrong with the wicket. Semtex and gelignite could be required tomorrow to get through a strong Kent batting line up a second time. There's every chance we won't do it, but it would be great if we could.

Whatever - no shouts of "bottlers" eh? We've dominated the best team in the division throughout. A little humidity and cloud cover would do nicely tomorrow.

I may not be able to blog tomorrow or over the weekend as our phones and internet have gone down locally. I'm currently sat in my local library dashing this out before they close - wonderful places, libraries - and the speed at which normal service is resumed is dictated by the amount of overtime the engineers are prepared to put in.

Hopefully be back soon!