Relegated Notts make Bears suffer in the field
CENTURIES from Steven Mullaney and Joe Clarke enabled Nottinghamshire to deliver their best batting performance since early April in their Specsavers County Championship meeting with Warwickshire at Trent Bridge.
The pair added 205 for the third wicket as Notts played with the freedom of a side whose fate has already been decided.
Their defeat last week to Kent means that they’ll be playing second tier cricket next season.
That, coupled with their qualification for this weekend’s Vitality Blast Finals Day, enabled Notts to ring the changes and pile on the runs.
By stumps they had reached 425 for six after being invited to bat first, their highest score of the season.
Mullaney scored a career-best 179, scoring his runs from 173 deliveries, with 26 fours and five sixes. The Notts’ club captain, who has recently returned to the side after knee surgery, was crestfallen last week as the drop was confirmed. He shrugged off that disappointment to plunder boundaries all around Trent Bridge from a Bears attack that kept offering him the width to keep peppering the advertising boards at cover. Clarke, who has struggled for runs since the opening week of the season, regained his touch with a sublime innings of 125 – like Mullaney, reaching 100 for the fifteenth time.
Three players were giving a firstclass debut by Notts, including Joey Evison who, at the age of 17 years 301 days, has become the first player born in the 2000s to represent the county.
Evison immediately looked at ease and caressed nine fours in making 45 from only 54 balls before falling lbw to Henry Brookes.
The other newcomers are Ben Compton, cousin for former England batsman Nick, who made 14 before being bowled by Will Rhodes and pace bowler Jack Blatherwick, who has made two one-day appearances for the county.
Chris Nash, at the other end of his playing career, was bowled by Henry Brookes without scoring. At lunch Mullaney was unbeaten on 90 and he wasted little time in advancing to his fifteenth first-class hundred soon afterwards, arriving at the landmark from 93 balls with 19 fours.
The Notts captain pepped up the already-impressive run-rate with the first of five huge sixes coming off George Garrett’s bowling. He passed 150 for the fourth time in his career from 140 balls before lofting Jeetan Patel to Oliver Hannon-Dalby at midoff.
Clarke reached his hundred from 153 balls, with 18 fours and then accelerated to 125 before hitting Rhodes out to deep midwicket. Ben Duckett missed out, caught off Hannon-Dalby for eight but Ravi Ashwin and Paul Coughlin took Notts past 400 for only the second time this year.
Bears coach Jim Troughton, asked if he had hoped for better in the opening session, said: “Definitely, the covers were on until around half past nine, there was a lot of rain yesterday, cloudy skies and the lights were on. You need to take that opportunity when you decide to bowl to use the conditions to your favour.
“Mull (Steven Mullaney) when he came to lunch had hit 17 boundaries. It was an unacceptable first session for us, probably our worst session of fielding this season, which is really disappointing.
“We’re disappointed that we didn’t put the ball in the right area and gave them far too many boundary options.
“We addressed it at lunch and I wanted to see an improvement in the second session and the only credit we get is at the end where we got those two wickets to get that second bowling point.
“A poor day and we’ll have to play well in the game now and we’ll have to bat well.”