County Championship 2024. Division 1. Nottinghamshire v Somerset 23^rd, 24^th, 25^th and 26^th June. Trent Bridge.

Due to a positive COVID test in my household shortly before this match, I opted not to travel to Nottingham. The reports are therefore written through watching the Nottinghamshire CCC live stream.

Lewis Gregory was unavailable due to a groin strain. Craig Overton captained the Somerset side.

Nottinghamshire. H. Hameed (c), B.T. Slater, W.A. Young, J.M. Clarke, J.A. Haynes, T.J. Moores (c), L.W. James, C.G. Harrison, O.P. Stone, D.Y. Pennington, D. Paterson.

Somerset. T.A. Lammonby, A.R.I. Umeed, T. Kohler-Cadmore, T.B. Abell, T. Banton, J.E.K. Rew (w), K.L. Aldridge, C. Overton (c), M. Pretorius, M.J. Leach, J.T. Ball.  

Overnight. Nottinghamshire 360 and 178 for 1. Somerset 470. Nottinghamshire lead by 68 runs with six second innings wickets standing.

Final day 26th June – H.G. Wells comes to Trent Bridge

Graham, H.G. Wells’ protagonist in The Sleeper Awakes, takes drugs to combat his incurable insomnia. He overdoes the drugs and falls asleep for 203 years. He might as well have watched the final day of this match for, to the online watcher at least, it might have lasted 203 years. There was no dystopian world at its end as there was at the end of Graham’s 203-year sleep, but by tea the stands looked so bare they might have served as the backdrop for one. It was a day of bowlers toiling under the hottest sun of the year on a pitch as devoid of life as a Martian desert. It offered no more hope to the bowlers than to prevent the batters from running riot. As it was, the bowlers stuck to their task with a grim determination, and the batters did not run riot, nor did they seem to have much ambition to. They just steadily picked off runs for the want of anything better to do. In cricket watching terms, it was an end to the match as dystopian as any dreamed up by Wells in his long career.

The previous day had ended with some foreboding of what was to come. After its first dozen overs, during which Somerset’s remaining specialist batters had suffered a traditional Somerset collapse, the last three wickets had added 149 runs at seven an over before Nottinghamshire closed on 178 for 1 at a cautious three an over. As the last vestiges of life had slowly ebbed from the pitch, those 327 runs for the loss of four wickets, three of them from the lower regions of the Somerset order, had served as an ominous harbinger of what was to come. The first dozen or so overs of the final day confirmed the worse fears. I could not watch the start in detail but kept an eye on the screen. The body language on the field and in the stands was already communicating the heat, and lazily run singles being pushed, steered and guided confirmed the fears of the previous evening.

An occasional ball would cross the boundary, two drives in an over from Ollie Stone off Jack Leach stood out, but the concentration of the Somerset watcher focused on whether the ball might have turned a half inch. Three boundaries from Stone in Migael Pretorius’s second over raised a wisp, but no more, of anxiety that the batting might break loose and give Somerset an uneasy couple of hours with the bat at the end of the day. But the pattern of the play soon became established as I took my seat in front of the screen. Order was restored for Somerset as Leach bowled a maiden to Ben Slater and Pretorius kept Nottinghamshire to a single from Stone in his next over. A thick edge from Slater off Leach caused me to stare in hope, but it ran for four, proving in the end to be one of those swallows that do not a summer, or a clatter of wickets, make.

Then, with the score on 247 for 1, half a dozen Somerset players suddenly sat down. It was not a protest against the iniquity of flat pitches, but a drinks interval. Drinks intervals have almost disappeared from the game, in this country at least, now that the busiest player on the field is the one who constantly runs out of the Pavilion with bottles of drink. That was not enough on this morning. The intensity of the heat, another four-day match starting in four days, and a day already shaping to define the word ‘interminable’ combining to bring back an old tradition.

And then, the day resumed. In the 14 overs between drinks and lunch, 46 runs were scored. Along the way, there were three fours from a Kasey Aldridge over, two of them pulled to long leg by Slater as Aldridge tried co coax a glimmer of life from the pitch, and an open-faced back foot drive from Stone through backward point brought up the century partnership. There were a couple of other boundaries, Stone sweeping Leach to long leg for one of them. For the rest there was defence from bats as dead as the pitch in front of them interspersed with mainly slow-motion singles to deep set fields as the bowlers worked to contain and the batters took what safe opportunity they could. The innings arrived at lunch with Nottinghamshire on 293 for 1, a lead of 183 with those fours having helped take the scoring rate for the morning to four an over. And yet, it was already clear that there was no time for Nottinghamshire to score enough to put Somerset under any sort of meaningful pressure. A long afternoon beckoned. H.G. Wells might have baulked at trying to drive a narrative through it and Graham would have complained bitterly had someone woken him up in the middle of it.

The hard-bitten Somerset supporter though has no choice in such circumstances but to remain chained to the match, or in this case a computer screen. The first seven overs, from Leach and Jake Ball, produced precisely ten runs with seven of those coming from two balls. There was a big leg before wicket appeal from Ball which looked perilously close, at least to this pair of Somerset eyes, but the hope fast drained away as the umpire remained unmoved. Then, before the match could go back to sleep, another appeal from Ball. This time his body language exuded that aura of absolute certainty which admits of no doubt and the umpire was roused into raising his finger. A wicket! Stone, on 63 to go with his first innings 81, ran sideways from the stumps as if trying to distance himself from the scene of the crime before walking off with the gait of a man who knew it was a fair cop. There was no rush to celebrate from the Somerset fielders, just a gradual gathering of the clans and quiet congratulations while the umpires slowly dragged themselves together like schoolboys approaching their front door with a bad report.

And then, there being no alternative, the afternoon rolled slowly on. There was a little more energy perhaps as Will Young brought a whiff of life to proceedings. There were 11 boundaries in the remaining 21 overs to tea of which seven were struck by Young, but no sign of a wicket or even a hint of one. Slater continued his steady, metronomic run gathering, many of his runs coming in strike-rotating singles. He did briefly come out of hibernation, as batters set for the long term sometimes do, taking two fours in an over from Pretorius, both driven, before quietly settling back into a rhythmic pushing of singles and obdurate defence. Young remained more assertive, mainly with drives, the ball finding the boundary straight and on both sides of the wicket. Occasionally, a bowler might find a thick edge, but the lack of pace in the pitch saw the ball refuse to carry to a fielder, travelling along the ground until it was retrieved for the bowler to run in again, sans expectation, sans hope, sans point.

The first half of the afternoon saw Leach repeatedly bobbing in to bowl, but posing little threat as the ball refused to turn more than a shade and then as slowly as the afternoon was passing. At the other end, Ball, Pretorius and Aldridge dutifully took their turn with only Stone’s wicket for reward. With still 40 minutes to go before tea, Tom Lammonby and Andy Umeed found themselves being pressed into service, presumably to save the legs of those who would have to carry the attack into the next match. It made no difference to the approach of the Nottinghamshire batters, 40 runs coming from the 11 overs to tea compared to the 48 that had come from the 11 overs before they came on. Even the umpires turned to drink as the drinks carriers repeatedly came and went, the heat showing no mercy to those condemned by the regulations to remain on the field until the earliest hour appointed for a finish. When tea came, Nottinghamshire were 396 for 2, a score which carries its own message about the pitch. Slater had methodically assembled an innings of 159 in over eight hours, Young was closing in on fifty after just under two hours and the bowlers had bowled 117 near wicketless overs.

After tea, the mood was not lifted by the final episode of the match which, as so often in these situations, was played as farce. Tom Kohler-Cadmore understudied the wicketkeeper role while James Rew, released from his never-ending vigil behind the stumps, took the part of midwicket. There, perhaps surprised by something actually happening, he dropped a firm pull from Young to deny Umeed the surprise final twist of a wicket. Young then rubbed salt into Umeed’s wound by going to fifty by driving him firmly through the covers off the back foot. Umeed then got into the spirit of that final hour by appearing to ask for a ball change. The umpires dutifully went through the motions and enough time for an over was lost, perhaps to the relief of all. For no apparent reason, Leach returned to bowl three overs and even managed a leg before wicket appeal, but a second wicket in the day was not in the script and the umpire, keeping strictly to the plot, kept his finger by his side. At the end, Tom Banton and Rew found themselves bowling, but by then the batters seemed to have lost interest and each took a reluctant single during the final two overs.

By then, the live stream, or my ancient laptop’s relay of it, had slowed to about half pace. The room in which I was watching had become increasingly stuffy as the afternoon wore on and my eyelids fought to stay open. It was as if the atmosphere of that final session at Trent Bridge had been transferred to the environs in which I sat. With the stream, or my laptop, becoming ever more reluctant, the bowlers seemed to be running in like astronauts on the moon but without the bounce. Arms came over in slow motion and the ball floated towards the batter like a balloon on a faint breeze. In the end, I added to the sense of farce by playing the live stream at double speed until it caught up with the play. It gave the impression of cricket played by the Keystone Cops and I concluded that H.G. Wells’ Graham with his 203-year long sleep had had the best of the afternoon.

Result. Nottinghamshire 360 (O.P. Stone 83, J.A. Haynes 55, J.M. Clarke 51, K.L. Aldridge 5-94, M Pretorius 4-96) and 425 for 2 (B.T. Slater 168*, H. Hameed 91, W.A. Young 68). Somerset 470 (T.B. Abell 111, M. Pretorius 95*, T.A. Lammonby 87, D.Y. Pennington 5-96, C.G. Harrison 3-173). Match drawn. Somerset 15 points. Nottinghamshire 13 points.