Smith aggravates Notts as four quick wickets leave hosts on brink of collapse
KIWI STARS WITH BAT AND BALL TO STIR WORCS BACK IN CONTENTION
NATHAN Smith, Worcestershire’s new Kiwi signing, made 58 as his side, six down overnight, added a crucial 135 lower-order runs to total 355 and then took four wickets in seven balls as Nottinghamshire, batting again, went to a shellshocked 151 for seven at the close, a lead of 195.
In a season notable for leg spin, another of that craft, Calvin Harrison, completed a maiden fivewicket bag for the home side earlier on the third day of this Vitality County Championship match but Smith’s thrilling counter with pace in the evening raised the spectre of a second home batting debacle at Trent Bridge in seven days.
Ben Duckett raced to 63 from 87 balls until undone an hour from the close, the first casualty of a triplewicket maiden to which Smith then added a fourth success, ripping out Jack Haynes’s off stump.
When Ben Slater went to a reflex short-leg catch off Josh Baker and Harrison was bowled by Adam Finch offering no shot, the collapse had encompassed six wickets for 19 runs in 51 balls from 125 for one.
With heavy showers forecast for Monday morning, Nottinghamshire, needing quick progress, belted 57 from a dozen overs either side of tea in an opening stand of 81. It is now more a question of whether they are bowled out before able to set a target.
The visitors’ resumed their seventh-wicket partnership earlier had added exactly 50 more runs before slow left-armer Liam Pattersonwhite, with only one wicket in five games of a difficult 2023 campaign, gained a first success this year when Brett D’oliveira fell legbefore for 54.
But Smith, a good enough No8 to have hit a hundred and average 27 back in New Zealand, continued passed a fifty from 103 balls after Baker, deceived in the flight, gave Harrison his fourth wicket via a third return catch. Once Joe Leach, no rabbit either, had escaped a run-out chance on one, lunch came at 331 for eight.
Harrison was briefly stood down – following 36 consecutive overs from before tea on Saturday but no maiden until his 26th – and it was Dillon Pennington with the new ball who finally had Smith caught, hooking to the deep.
The return of Harrison undid the last man and left Leach unbeaten with 48.
Harrison’s figures, 36.3-2-128-5, recalled those of wrist spinners of another era and were completed even as, down in Chelmsford, fellow leggie Matt Critchley took his first five-wicket bag since joining Essex in 2022.
This after Cameron Steel, another in the improbable April trio, had taken his maiden ‘five-fer,’ for Surrey, in the opening round last week.
The Kookaburra ball, making life so hard for seamers, has at least given leg-spin a chance.
But it certainly couldn’t stifle Smith, tearing in from the Stuart Broad End in late sunshine after Haseeb Hameed skied a catch to point for 40 off Baker’s left-arm spin. In his eighth over, Smith had Duckett caught at square leg, flicking a ball off his hip, saw Joe Clarke superbly caught by the diving keeper and shot out Matt Montgomery, a second duck, leg-before.
He takes figures of 11-4-29-4 into the final day when Nottinghamshire may be the keener of the two sides to hope that rain indeed arrives.