Match Report: Nottinghamshire vs. Kent
Kent faced Nottinghamshire in the LV= Insurance County Championship at Trent Bridge.
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Day Four Report:
Five wickets for Dane Patterson and four for Brett Hutton consigned Kent to a rapid and damaging defeat in their LV= Insurance County Championship match at Trent Bridge, where they were bowled out for 85 to drop into the bottom two in Division One with only three matches to play.
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Patterson finished with five for 41 in 10 overs, while Hutton’s four for 44 allowed him to celebrate a 50-wicket season for the first time in his first-class career, giving him 52 so far.
Kent skipper Jack Leaning’s 21 was a paltry top score as Kent, theoretically chasing 407 to win from 72 overs, were dismissed in just 21 and a half overs.
Earlier, Will Young and Ben Slater had both made 87 and Joe Clarke 73 before Nottinghamshire declared their second innings on 372 some 40 minutes or so before lunch.
The result gives Nottinghamshire 22 points, which is probably enough to ensure they remain in Division One for another season after being promoted in 2022.
Slater, his eyes on a second hundred in the match, fell to the fifth ball of the day, unable to add to his overnight score, but otherwise Nottinghamshire’s plans on how to set up a run chase could not have gone better.
If anything, they went too well, the scoreboard turning so rapidly that skipper Steven Mullaney might well have had to think again about when to declare given the overs left in the match. When he did decide the moment was right, some 196 runs had been added in just 78 minutes following Nottinghamshire’s resumption on 176 for one.
Of those, 114 came off just 77 balls in a blistering third-wicket stand between New Zealand’s Young, who made 87 in the last innings of his brief attachment to the county, and Clarke, whose 73 from 40 balls would have felt like the perfect preparation for his upcoming stint with Welsh Fire in The Hundred.
Clarke hit three sixes, matching Young’s tally of maximums in half the number of balls, and there were a couple each for Mullaney and Lyndon James, who hammered 42 in 18 balls for the sixth wicket before Mullaney’s dismissal, bowled aiming to inflict more damage in an Arafat Bhuiyan over that had already gone for 20, prompted the declaration.
Eventually caught at deep midwicket, Clarke should have gone for 26 but Arshdeep Singh, in his final outing for Kent, dropped a regulation catch at mid-off. Joey Evison, the disappointed bowler and Clarke’s former Trent Bridge team-mate, was only too aware of how costly that mistake might be.
Like Clarke, Young and Tom Moores were caught in the deep going for big returns as Nottinghamshire ultimately pushed the Kent target beyond 400, which was never likely to be a realistic ask of a side lacking so many front-line batters through injuries and international calls.
Yet draw still looked within their capabilities and the rapid unravelling of that possibility came as a surprise.
In the eight overs before lunch, their top three all departed. Toby Albert copped a beauty from Hutton to fall for a fourth-ball duck, Ben Geddes fell victim to a fine, rapid-reaction catch by Slater at short leg off Paterson and Ben Compton was leg before to a swinging ball as the South African celebrated his second success.
Lunch did nothing to stiffen Kent’s resolve, with Harry Finch soon leg before as Hutton claimed his 50th of the season, before Jack Leaning was caught behind off a bottom edge to make it 51.
Paterson had Evison caught low down at third slip and Matt Quinn on the boundary as a merrily brief innings ended with a top-edged pull. Alex Blake knew his fate immediately as he saw Mullaney readying himself for the catch as he heaved Hutton over midwicket and Arshdeep, having launched Paterson for six over the leg side, perished next ball, well caught by a diving Hutton at deep backward square attempting a repeat.
The two pacemen each took a breather after 10 overs, but Kent’s demise was quickly completed as Bhuiyan gave Haseeb Hameed’s leg breaks a maiden first-class wicket.
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“For three days, we were right up with them competing, and then for an hour and a half today we were a mile away. It was pretty abysmal if I’m honest. They bowled well, they got quite a few wickets from good bowling early doors, but ultimately a few of us got ourselves out.
“But we had a young team out there and I thought we actually did pretty well to stay in the game as long as we did. If you take 10 players out of any side it would look a very different team and those injuries have all come at once for us.
“We didn’t bowl as well as we should have on the first day after winning the toss in pretty favourable conditions. Nottinghamshire probably scored 100 more than we should have.
“But then we scrapped well with the bat in the first innings. We had six scored between 30 and Finchy’s 70 and it only takes one of them to get a hundred and another to go to 70 or 80 and we go past them by a hundred runs and it is a very different perspective when they come out to bat second innings.
“As it was, they get a little lead and got off to a bit of a flyer and then it can be tough to get the game back in your court. But having said that we are making too many mistakes as a team, regardless of which team we have put out ourselves, and we’ve got to put that right pretty quickly or we are going to find ourselves playing in Division Two next season.
“On the positive side, we were in the same position last season and we ended up fifth, Cricket can be a funny game sometimes. We have a break for the 50-over competition now, where we are the defending champions.
“Nothing is a given. We need to make sure we get our heads right, go back to our solid plans that gave us success in the 50-over competition last year and stick to them, and stick together as a group because it is a tough time when failure keeps happening. You have to pick yourselves up and keep going and ultimately it will turn.
“Earlier in the season when we had a break for the T20 we came back with fresh impetus and hopefully that can happen again, and we can take some confidence into the final red ball games. Hopefully some of the injured players are not that far away from being ready to play again and we can come back in September and hit the ground running.”
Day Three Report:
Five wickets for Dane Patterson and four for Brett Hutton consigned Kent to a rapid and damaging defeat in their LV= Insurance County Championship match at Trent Bridge, where they were bowled out for 85 to drop into the bottom two in Division One with only three matches to play.
View full scorecard
Patterson finished with five for 41 in 10 overs, while Hutton’s four for 44 allowed him to celebrate a 50-wicket season for the first time in his first-class career, giving him 52 so far.
Kent skipper Jack Leaning’s 21 was a paltry top score as Kent, theoretically chasing 407 to win from 72 overs, were dismissed in just 21 and a half overs.
Earlier, Will Young and Ben Slater had both made 87 and Joe Clarke 73 before Nottinghamshire declared their second innings on 372 some 40 minutes or so before lunch.
The result gives Nottinghamshire 22 points, which is probably enough to ensure they remain in Division One for another season after being promoted in 2022.
Slater, his eyes on a second hundred in the match, fell to the fifth ball of the day, unable to add to his overnight score, but otherwise Nottinghamshire’s plans on how to set up a run chase could not have gone better.
If anything, they went too well, the scoreboard turning so rapidly that skipper Steven Mullaney might well have had to think again about when to declare given the overs left in the match. When he did decide the moment was right, some 196 runs had been added in just 78 minutes following Nottinghamshire’s resumption on 176 for one.
Of those, 114 came off just 77 balls in a blistering third-wicket stand between New Zealand’s Young, who made 87 in the last innings of his brief attachment to the county, and Clarke, whose 73 from 40 balls would have felt like the perfect preparation for his upcoming stint with Welsh Fire in The Hundred.
Clarke hit three sixes, matching Young’s tally of maximums in half the number of balls, and there were a couple each for Mullaney and Lyndon James, who hammered 42 in 18 balls for the sixth wicket before Mullaney’s dismissal, bowled aiming to inflict more damage in an Arafat Bhuiyan over that had already gone for 20, prompted the declaration.
Eventually caught at deep midwicket, Clarke should have gone for 26 but Arshdeep Singh, in his final outing for Kent, dropped a regulation catch at mid-off. Joey Evison, the disappointed bowler and Clarke’s former Trent Bridge team-mate, was only too aware of how costly that mistake might be.
Like Clarke, Young and Tom Moores were caught in the deep going for big returns as Nottinghamshire ultimately pushed the Kent target beyond 400, which was never likely to be a realistic ask of a side lacking so many front-line batters through injuries and international calls.
Yet draw still looked within their capabilities and the rapid unravelling of that possibility came as a surprise.
In the eight overs before lunch, their top three all departed. Toby Albert copped a beauty from Hutton to fall for a fourth-ball duck, Ben Geddes fell victim to a fine, rapid-reaction catch by Slater at short leg off Paterson and Ben Compton was leg before to a swinging ball as the South African celebrated his second success.
Lunch did nothing to stiffen Kent’s resolve, with Harry Finch soon leg before as Hutton claimed his 50th of the season, before Jack Leaning was caught behind off a bottom edge to make it 51.
Paterson had Evison caught low down at third slip and Matt Quinn on the boundary as a merrily brief innings ended with a top-edged pull. Alex Blake knew his fate immediately as he saw Mullaney readying himself for the catch as he heaved Hutton over midwicket and Arshdeep, having launched Paterson for six over the leg side, perished next ball, well caught by a diving Hutton at deep backward square attempting a repeat.
The two pacemen each took a breather after 10 overs, but Kent’s demise was quickly completed as Bhuiyan gave Haseeb Hameed’s leg breaks a maiden first-class wicket.
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Day Three Report:
Nottinghamshire put themselves in a position to dictate the terms of the final day as openers Ben Slater and Haseeb Hameed built on a small first-innings lead to leave their side 210 in front with nine wickets in hand at the close of day three of their LV= Insurance County Championship match against Kent.
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The pair shared a partnership of 131 – Nottingham’s best this season for the first wicket – before Hameed was out for 45 six overs before the close. Slater’s unbeaten 87 leaves him 13 runs away from a second hundred in the match, with Will Young on 32 from just 19 balls as Nottinghamshire finished on 176 for one.
Earlier, although there were solid performances from Harry Finch (73) and Joey Evison (49), Kent ultimately squandered what looked to be a good position in reply to Nottinghamshire’s first-innings 350 by losing their last five wickets for 23 to be 316 all out.
Leg-spinner Calvin Harrison finished with a career-best four for 28 – albeit in only his seventh first-class match – and Brett Hutton kept his nose in front as Division One’s leading wicket-taker with three for 76, despite Jamie Porter taking 10 in the match for Essex against Hampshire.
Kent, whose relegation worries have increased with Middlesex’s win at Edgbaston, had been well placed at 102 for two when rain forced them off at tea on Wednesday, but their morning began badly when Ben Geddes, the loanee from Surrey who had played well for his 36, was out in the second over, caught by Harrison at second slip chasing a widish ball from Hutton that found some extra bounce.
A recovery followed. After hours of rain through the previous evening, Nottinghamshire might have anticipated a period of renewed liveliness from a pitch that had given the seamers plenty of encouragement over the first two days but neither Hutton nor Dane Paterson could control the scoreboard in their opening spells.
Finch and Jack Leaning settled in nicely and it took a strange dismissal shortly before lunch to deny the fourth-wicket pair a substantial partnership.
It came after Harrison entered the attack for the first time and a disbelieving Leaning was out to his second ball, a freakish dismissal – where the ball came off the keeper’s right pad. It flew over the head of Mullaney at slip but the Nottinghamshire skipper had time to catch it on its way down.
Nonetheless, breakthroughs were rare as Kent, for all their injury woes, steadily eroded the advantage Nottinghamshire had seemed to have established with what looked like a good score on a relatively hazardous pitch.
Kent’s assessment at Wednesday’s close that 350 might be a par score had seemed like wishful thinking but Nottinghamshire, missing Luke Fletcher from their attack after he limped off the field on day two, found it difficult to create many opportunities.
Alex Blake, in his first red-ball innings for four years, fell to the fifth delivery with the second new ball as Hutton raised his tally for the season to 48 – his best return in a first-class season – but as Finch and Evison added 75 in 18 overs it seemed Kent’s confidence had not been misplaced after all.
Yet after Paterson, having bowled 17 unsuccessful overs from the pavilion end, switched to the Radcliffe Road end and Harrison returned for a second spell, everything changed rapidly.
First Finch, who had gone past fifty for the third time in as many matches since Kent’s injury crisis opened up a place in the senior side, made a rare misjudgement and paid the price, offering no shot as Paterson brought one back to clip his off stump.
The South African followed up by bowling Evison in his next over with another nip-backer, good enough to do the job even though Evison did attempt to keep it out.
Harrison then coaxed a miscue to deep extra cover from Matt Quinn and from 293 for five, Kent were suddenly 308 for eight. A couple of overs more and they were all out and conceding a 34-run deficit, the leg-spinner finishing the innings with two in two balls as Arshdeep holed out to deep midwicket and Arafat Bhuiyan offered him a rigid front pad.
By the evening, largely played out in sunshine, the pitch looked to have settled down and Slater and Hameed exposed the limitations of the Kent attack, which lacks a front-line spinner, proceeding largely untroubled, certainly in terms of chances offered, through almost 35 overs before Hameed aimed an injudicious slash at a shortish wide delivery from Arshdeep Singh and was caught behind.
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Kent’s Harry Finch said:
“We were a bit disappointed with how the day ended. Had we managed to get a few wickets it would have made it interesting. That didn’t happen but we’ll see what we can do in the morning.
“The pitch is still doing a bit if you bowl it in the right areas but as a group we didn’t do that consistently enough.
“Our batting – I got 70-odd when I really should have gone on to get 100 and a few of the other guys got 30s and 40s. A few more pushes us up past them. I don’t think it was a 350 pitch, to be honest. They probably got 100 over par so it was a pretty good effort from us really.
“I’ve been pleased with how it has gone for me back in the side, although I think more about doing something to put us in a good place as a team than what I do for myself. I just try to play the situation as it comes.
“It is obviously a team with a lot of players missing. I would be lying to say we weren’t a bit disappointed at the end. It was a pitch where we could have had them 80 for five on another day, but we can’t be too hard on ourselves.
“We had a couple of young guys making their debuts in the batting and some of our bowlers don’t have a lot of experience yet, so we can’t be too harsh on ourselves.”
Day Two Report:
Injury-kit Kent finished on 102 for two in reply to Nottinghamshire’s 350 all out on a rain-hit second day of their LV= Insurance County Championship clash at Trent Bridge. No play was possible after tea.
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With 10 first-team players either injured or unavailable, Jack Leaning’s Kent side included two batters signed on emergency loan and another brought out of red-ball ‘retirement’ with the county’s resources so stretched.
After Ben Slater’s opening-day century, wicketkeeper Tom Moores made 94 as Nottinghamshire secured three batting points, 20-year-old Jas Singh finishing with four for 87 as Kent collected three for bowling. Both teams – Kent in particular – will feel happier with a win here ahead of the break for the Metro Bank One-Day Cup as they seek to preserve their Division One status.
Brett Hutton, the Championship’s leading wicket-taker, bagged his 46th scalp of the season when he dismissed former Nottinghamshire team-mate Ben Compton, which makes this the most successful campaign of his career, beating the 45 wickets he collected for Northamptonshire in Division Two in 2018.
On the basis of day one, when Kent’s bowlers could have made more of a helpful pitch, the 75 runs Nottinghamshire were able to add to their overnight score in similarly tricky conditions looked to have put them in a good position.
The only negative amid their morning’s work was that Moores, 72 overnight and eyeing up a first hundred in a first-class match since August 2020, failed six runs short, edging a catch to gully as a decent ball from Matt Quinn squared him up a touch. His 49-run partnership with Lyndon James had just secured a second batting point.
After Kent had taken the second new ball at the start of play, James, who made 36, was caught at second slip after Calvin Harrison had been taken at first and Hutton caught behind as conditions continued to aid the seamers.
It had been a decent morning for the makeshift Kent attack, certainly, compared with the first day. Singh, a right-armer who has come though the Kent academy, finished with four wickets in an innings for the second time in only his sixth first-class match.
Getting close to Nottinghamshire’s score looked a fairly formidable task for a Kent batting line-up more patched-up even than their bowling. Toby Albert and Ben Geddes, making their debuts on loan from Hampshire and Surrey respectively, arrived with only six first-class appearances between them; Alex Blake, on a white-ball only contract since 2020, is appearing in a first-class match for the first time since July 2019.
At tea, nonetheless, they were making a pretty decent fist of their reply, having negotiated a 36-over session with only two losses. Compton was leg before to a swinging delivery from Hutton, but the aforementioned Albert, a 21-year-old right-hander who batted at No 3 in Hampshire’s Vitality Blast side, batted nicely for his 37 in only his second first-class match before falling to a good catch by Harrison at second slip.
Albert’s loose drive provided a comeback wicket for Luke Fletcher, playing for the first time in the Championship since early May after undergoing surgery for an ankle spur, although the local favourite began limping noticeably soon afterwards and had to leave the field two balls into his 10th over, which will be of concern to Nottinghamshire skipper Steven Mullaney.
Geddes also impressed. Another 21-year-old, he posted his maiden first-class century against Kent last summer before being made captain of a young Surrey side in the One-Day Cup. He was unbeaten on 36 out of 102 for two at tea before the weather closed in.
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Kent debutant Toby Albert, on loan from Hampshire, said: “We are pretty happy with where we are in the game. The wicket is obviously offering a little bit but after a good morning with the ball it was nice to get off to a good start this afternoon. To be two down with a hundred on the board is good because Nottinghamshire have an attack who can rip through sides.
“It is tricky against the new ball here but the wickets here tend to get better and I think this one is getting a bit easier. It was a good toss to win and we think 350 is probably about par.
“It is a decent score but the wicket did start to get a bit flatter and to take those five wickets this morning – they could easily have got 450 if we hadn’t bowled how we wanted to this morning. We tried to hold our lines and lengths for as long as possible and got the rewards.
“We will look to build on this position tomorrow, hopefully get level with them and then see where we are.
“The move to Kent came about very quickly. I had a call last Saturday. They had obviously had a few injuries and I was asked if I would like to go and do it and I said yes to the opportunity.
“I got a few runs against them at Polo Farm for the Second XI and I’m sure that was one of the reasons they thought of me.”
Day One Report:
Nottinghamshire opener Ben Slater completed his first LV=Insurance County Championship hundred since April last year to lay the foundation for a solid opening day against Kent at Trent Bridge.
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The left-hander, who has had a lean year by the standards he has set in recent seasons, made exactly 100, with wicket keeper Tom Moores finishing unbeaten on 72 as Nottinghamshire closed on 275 for five.
Kent’s bowling lacked consistency. Matt Quinn and Arshdeep Singh kept to a little over two runs an over but Jas Singh’s two wickets came at a cost of 11 fours and a six in 12 overs.
Beset by injuries and other non-availabilities, Kent were forced to sign two on-loan batters ahead of this fixture but might have expected more from their seam attack on a pitch that looked green enough to have tempted Nottinghamshire to bowl first had they won the toss.
Under an overcast morning sky, batting looked hazardous when the stumps were under threat but Kent’s bowlers were too often wide of that mark in the opening session, conceding boundaries in 12 consecutive overs across one expansive passage of play.
Joey Evison, a talented all-rounder who left Trent Bridge last year through lack of opportunities, inflicted the only wound to the Nottinghamshire top order when Haseeb Hameed, who was beginning to find his timing after a slow start, played all round one that hit the knee roll of his front pad.
The exception among the Kent seamers was Arshdeep Singh, the Indian white-ball international left-armer who is playing in the last of his five first-class matches in England this summer. Unlucky at times from the pavilion end as Nottinghamshire reached 116 for one at lunch, he was rewarded for switching ends shortly afterwards as the New Zealander Will Young, another at the end of a short-term contract, pushed forward to a ball that found the edge.
Nonetheless, the day was still unfolding nicely for Nottinghamshire until just over an hour into the afternoon session, when they lost Joe Clarke and then Slater within four overs. Clarke, who had steered his first ball for four to the short boundary on the Bridgeford Road side, looked in ominously good touch as he drove and pulled two more boundaries and then hoisted Jas Singh over the longer boundary for six.
Yet he was stopped in his tracks on 22 when pinned in front by a swinging delivery from Matt Quinn. Minutes later, after running three from a straight drive to complete his hundred from 150 balls, Slater was squared up a touch by a ball from Jas Singh that found the thinnest of edges, a second catch for Harry Finch, who continued as stand-in wicket keeper with Jordan Cox injured and Sam Billings taking time away from the game.
It left Steven Mullaney and Tom Moores with a rebuilding job at 169 for four, not helped by a stoppage of 108 minutes after a burst of heavy rain followed by a lengthy mopping-up operation.
The delay cost 15 overs and, seemingly, Kent’s hopes of building any momentum on the back of those two important wickets as the fifth-wicket partners added 83 before there was another breakthrough, Mullaney falling leg before as Jas Singh hurried one through.
Kent had missed two chances along the way, with Mullaney dropped inexplicably by Ben Compton at first slip on 16 off Arshdeep Singh, and Moores given a life moments after his eighth four had taken him to a 77-ball half-century as Jas Singh shelled a difficult caught-and-bowled.
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Kent head coach Matt Walker said: “With the squad we had available we have had to play two young bowlers in this game, so the expectation levels are a bit different. For those players it is about development.
“But having won the toss, which we felt was a good toss to win, we would have liked the day to have gone a bit better.
“There was plenty in the wicket but in that first session we gave away too many freebies, we got cut a bit too often, didn’t create enough pressure early on.
“Using that new ball well on that wicket was pretty key and 100 for one at lunch was not quite where we wanted to be. We came back well in the second session but let things slip a bit at the end. We got a bit sloppy and dropped a couple of catches.
“We did not use the ball well enough and we weren’t consistent enough through the day, but we know where we are with the squad. It was nowhere near our first-choice bowling attack and that is no disrespect to the lads that came in.
“In terms of injuries, it has been the most extraordinary period I can remember with so many players going down. But it is just what it is, you can’t help it. You have to deal with it as best you can.”
