Ahmed bags hat-trick as Notts Blast campaign ends with win

But Notts were soon struggling to cope themselves with a turning pitch as England slow left-armer Tom Hartley claimed two men in the reply’s second over and at 14-4 after 17 balls the modest target seemed far distant.

At which point the left-hander Tom Moores, in wonderful batting form all campaign, arrived to pass an outstanding fifty from only 23 balls en route to claiming the match.

His 81-run stand at nine per over with Lyndon James, out for 20, left 32 needed from 50 balls when James, bowled cutting at Luke Wells’s leg-spin, departed. But Moores himself had reached 75 from 42 balls when trying to complete a second run for his new partner Dan Sams to complete the win he was beaten by a direct hit from Chris Green.

Victory came next ball at 127-6 with 28 balls to spare. It was Moores’s highest score of this campaign and only six short of his best in all his 168 innings in both white-ball formats.

Opting to bat earlier, Lightning fell foul of Notts’ quartet of varied spinners as they plummeted to 53-5 from eight overs, Liam Patterson-White continuing to two for 14 in his full quota of four overs with his slow left-armers before off-spinner Ahmed’s hat-trick ended the innings from the final three scheduled balls.

Their openers had got off to a deceptive flyer, pummelling 38 from the first 19 balls until two of the Outlaws’s spinners struck three times between them in their opening overs. Gaining immediate turn, Ahmed and Liam Patterson-White, with two in four balls, suddenly left Lightning 40-3 from five overs.

When another spinner, Matt Montgomery, the South African who plays for Germany, undid a fourth batter, all bowled or LBW, and ended the eighth over by having out-of-form Australian Ashton Turner caught in the infield, five had gone for 15 in 4.4 overs, none exceeding Keaton Jennings’ 20.

A recovery of sorts for the sixth-wicket ended when, from successive balls, Matty Hurst, stumbling, was run out by Olly Stone’s throw to the ‘keeper for 36 and, next over, the Australian-raised Chris Green was taken in the deep for 29 to give Ahmed, one of two Outlaws teenagers, his second scalp.

Their 62-run stand proved comfortably the best of the innings but Notts only needed 6.35 per over, a requirement which had become 6.58 when Moores arrived with four gone so cheaply. Within only 40 balls his partnership with Lyndon James had already bettered that Lancashire recovery, James outscored four to one in offering calm support.

Notts carried the burden of a net run rate so poor that hopes of progressing were essentially only theoretical even if two other games went their way. As it was victory over Lightning, the North Group’s best side, at least brought some late consolation for a summer in which they missed the quarters for the third time in four seasons.