Notts up and running in title defence after first win of the campaign
Nottinghamshire closed out their first win of the Rothesay County Championship season as Glamorgan, tasked with scoring 478 to secure a highly improbable victory, were bowled out for 285.
Asa Tribe, unbeaten on 82 overnight, was dismissed in the third over of the morning but promoted Glamorgan at least demanded patience and perseverance of the defending champions, who collected 20 points to go second in the early-season Division One table, winning by 192 runs.
Two down for 132 at the start of play, Glamorgan were 200 for seven at lunch but kept Nottinghamshire in the field until just before four o’clock, thanks to a show of defiance led by Mason Crane, their leg spinner, who batted two and a half hours for his 39.
Crane was last man out, leg before to left-arm spinner Liam Patterson-White, who finished with three for 13. There were two wickets for all-rounder Lyndon James, who did not start this match but came in as a last-day replacement after Australian bowler Fergus O’Neill dropped out with a rib injury.
O’Neill had taken five wickets in the match and played an important role with the bat too, his first-innings half-century helping Nottinghamshire recover from 103 for six to 279 all out after being put in on a difficult pitch.
Jack Haynes led that fightback with his first century of the season, matched by Joe Clarke in the second innings, whose 136 was key to giving his side a commanding lead after Glamorgan had been dismissed for 113.
“It is a really pleasing win. The wicket did a little bit the first couple of days, and we got in a quite difficult position at 100 for 6. So to come back and have a commanding win against a pretty decent Glamorgan side, with everybody contributing, is a massive achievement for us,” Patterson-White said of the win. “We knew we were going to have to work hard today to try and get over the line. The game ebbed and flowed a little bit today. We thought we were in when we got a couple of early ones in that first session, but credit to Glamorgan, they made us really work for it.
“It is good to get an early win when you’re the title holders but we aren’t really looking at it that way. Our mindset is not that we’re defending the title but looking to win it again, trying to get as many wins as we can, as we did last season. That’s our mantra.”
Glamorgan had been two down for 132 going into the final day, theoretically needing 346 more to win. Surviving 96 overs nine down or fewer was a more realistic target, so losing three wickets in the first five overs of the day was not the kind of start that was needed.
The news that O’Neill would miss the remainder might have been a source of comfort but Hutton and Dillon Pennington, who had combined effectively on the third evening after 52 overs were lost to rain, continued where they had left off.
Pennington struck first, having Kiran Carlson caught behind with a fine ball that took the outside edge of the Glamorgan captain’s defensive bat, before Hutton landed two major blows in the space of nine deliveries.
The bigger of the two came first as Tribe, who had survived a fierce test of his technique and temperament before Saturday’s close, shaped to play square into the off side only to bottom-edge into his stumps.
Wicketkeeper Kyle Verreynne, who had been standing up when Tribe was facing Hutton, went back for Colin Ingram and profited almost immediately as the 40-year-old Glamorgan stalwart could only connect with the edge as he went to drive.
James, the all-rounder, came in for O’Neill as the second injury replacement of the match.
Sean Dickson, the first of the substitutes after Ben Kellaway dropped out on day one, joined Chris Cooke in the middle and the pair mounted some resistance. Had they been able to sustain it beyond lunch, then Glamorgan might have felt they still had a chance of effecting an escape.
But James, on after a brief spell from Josh Tongue at the Stuart Broad End, removed each of them in consecutive overs, Cooke leg before and Dickson caught behind square, both pulling. Lunch saw Glamorgan 200 for seven.
To their credit, Glamorgan refused to roll over. Timm van der Gugten and Crane dug in for another hour before the former was leg before to Patterson-White and Crane found another durable partner in Andy Gorvin, who almost made it through 21 overs to tea, only to lose concentration just two balls from the scheduled interval time, dragging on a delivery from Patterson-White to be bowled, the ninth wicket delaying tea just long enough for the left-arm spinner to finish the job.