County Championship 2026. Nottinghamshire v Somerset. June 12^th, 13^th, 14^th and 15^th. Trent Bridge.

Tom Kohler-Cadmore (thumb), Will Smeed (finger), Tom Abell (hand) and Tom Lammonby (elbow) were unavailable for selection.

Nottinghamshire. H. Hameed (c),B.T. Slater, F.W. McCann, J.M. Clarke (w), J.A. Haynes, L.W. James, L.A. Patterson-White, F.P. O’Neill, B.A. Hutton, D.Y. Pennington, Mohammed Ali.

Somerset. J.G. Hermann, J.F. Thomas, L.P. Goldsworthy, J.E.K. Rew (w), T.H.S. Rew, A.M. Vaughan, C. Overton, L. Gregory/J.T. Ball*, M.J. Leach, M. Pretorius, A.R.J. Ogborne.

*Jake Ball replaced Lewis Gregory for the Nottinghamshire second innings under the ECB injury trial replacement guidelines for 2026.

Overnight. Somerset 310 and 355 for 7 dec. Nottinghamshire 193 and 47 for 3. Nottinghamshire need 426 more runs to win with seven second innings wickets standing.

Final day – The irresistible force removes the immovable object

When Haseeb Hameed attempted to glance Craig Overton, Thomas Rew moved sharply to leg, intercepted the ball with perfection, rolled with the momentum of the catch before standing up all in the same movement ending with his arms held aloft in triumph. The perfect way to maintain balance and hold on to the ball I imagine but producing the image of a showman too. That is no criticism any more than it would have been a criticism of Alan Knott or Godfrey Evans. Somerset have found one here, as someone once put it to me when they first saw a young Craig Overton. Overton himself had already half-swivelled to appeal and the umpire’s finger was held aloft before the appeal was over. A replay shows a clear deflection off the bat and Hameed not as much as glancing at the umpire. He just leaned forward on his bat, hung his head low and then walked off.

As soon as the finger was raised, Overton had let forth a guttural shriek that rent the air before running towards gully still shrieking as he went. Half the team followed him while others ran to Rew and hugged him in celebration. Such was the reaction of the Somerset players and of Hameed that it was clear both sides knew the Nottinghamshire game was up, that the biggest obstacle to a Somerset victory had been removed. Hameed above all others in the Nottinghamshire team possessed the capacity to bat through the day and hold the Nottinghamshire innings together under pressure. With him gone and Nottinghamshire five down in only the eighth over of the day, with the Somerset bowlers fired up on a helpful pitch, and with minimal if any rain in the forecast, even the most pessimistic of Somerset supporters must have been leaning forward trying to contain their anticipation.

The writing had already appeared on the wall for Nottinghamshire in the third over of the day. Jake Ball, seemingly rejuvenated in 2026 and perhaps with an extra blast of fire at what for so many years was his home county, had spectacularly removed Joe Clarke, the other overnight not out batter. Bowling with some pace, he cut a ball in a trace scythed through Clarke’s defensive stroke and uprooted his off stump. I had opted to sit in the Hound Road Stand for the first time on one of my trips to Trent Bridge. From the lower terrace I had a perfect view of that stump being flattened. There is no greater sight in cricket than a fast bowler flattening a stump. It is instantaneous, final, irrevocable but it takes the mind a split second to register it. But the stump was flat, Clarke was out and Nottinghamshire were 51 for 4 with Clarke walking off for 4. It felt like a statement too. Somerset meant business. The tide was flowing.

After the departure of Clarke, Hameed and Jack Haynes tried to stand against it. Three boundaries in three overs followed, Haynes driving Ball through the covers, and Hameed driving Overton straight among them. Their resistance roused some applause from the small final day crowd of perhaps four hundred. But any Somerset doubts were expunged when Hameed too was swept away trying to glance that ball from Overton. As Rew completed that rolling catch in a movement of which any gymnast would have been proud, the Nottinghamshire score was 69 for 5. As Hameed, 25, followed Clarke off, his hour and three quarters of resistance over, the crowd went quiet.

Two overs later, Overton bowled to Lyndon James. The ball was angled in towards off stump, straightened off the pitch and James’s defensive stroke edged it waist high towards first slip whose hands shaped to take the catch. The ball never arrived. Rew had taken off and taken the catch one-handed whilst in full flight. It was a spectacular, perfectly judged catch or perhaps it was pure instinct. Whichever, it spoke of an exceptional natural talent, and as James walked off Rew was once again being hugged by his teammates. Nottinghamshire 75 for 6. James 0. “Come on, Notts,” said a painfully plaintiff voice from the other, sight screen, end of the Hound Road Stand from where I was sitting.

But the Somerset tide was in full flow, the Nottinghamshire batters seemingly standing like sandcastles against it. The only cause for hope for Nottinghamshire came from a few spots of rain that fell after the fall of James. They caused a tinge of Somerset anxiety when they appeared but came to nothing and stopped after five minutes or so. The Somerset bowlers, Overton in particular, had bowled like the proverbial irresistible force except that they were removing the immovable object that had been Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in recent seasons.

Liam Patterson-White did drive Migael Pretorius, who had replaced Overton at the Radcliffe Road End, wide of mid-off for four. But soon, he too had been swept away. Pretorius, bowling around the wicket to the left-hander angled a ball in on Patterson-White’s off stump. Patterson-White’s bat came down to meet the incoming ball, but instead, edged it low, straight to Overton and second slip. Unusually, perhaps ‘virtually unheard of’ might be a better way of putting it, Overton had not caught everything that had come his way in 2026. No matter, he bent down now and took this catch with all the natural movement that Rew had shown behind the stumps. Nottinghamshire 87 for 7. Patterson-White 4.

It was all happening too quickly for a wide-eyed Somerset supporter to credit. But, as so often when a side is losing wickets quickly, one batter finds a way of staying in. Here, for a while, it had been Jack Haynes. In at the fall of the fourth wicket, he was still at the crease after the seventh had followed the others. He had looked as secure as any of those who had fallen away in the face of the Somerset assault, played himself in and twice driven each of Alfie Ogborne and Ball through the covers for four. Eventually though, he too succumbed to the Somerset onslaught, and seeing Overton and Ball powering in, there was no other word. But it was Pretorius who finally removed Haynes.

Pretorius is sometimes the invisible man of the Somerset attack, understated, undemonstrative, with both the ball and in the field. With the ball, he is persevering, quite sharp in pace, and effective. In 2026, at the end of this match, he had taken as many Championship wickets, 23, as Lewis Gregory with only Overton with 31 taking more. Haynes had batted for nearly an hour and a half when Pretorius angled a ball in from outside off stump, it straightened off the pitch, took the edge of Haynes’ defensive bat and Rew took his third catch of the morning and the most straightforward of the three. Nottinghamshire 104 for 8. Haynes 24.

With that, Dylan Pennington came to the crease to join Nottinghamshire’s man of the match, Fergus O’Neill whose six-wicket haul had kept Somerset’s first innings total within bounds. O’Neill played a defiant, if in terms of the outcome of the match, futile innings. It did though give the Nottinghamshire supporters something to applaud. He found the boundary nine times, mainly with the drive as the Somerset bowlers kept the ball up, and the batters under constant pressure. Some of the boundaries were the sort of strokes that bring gasps from a crowd. Two square drives in an over from Archie Vaughan, brought on at the Radcliffe Road End to partner Jack Leach in the 15-minute extension of the morning session invoked because Nottinghamshire were eight wickets down, were particularly eye-catching. With Pennington, over the next half hour, he saw Nottinghamshire to lunch on 138 for 8, the pair having added 34 runs in 15 overs. As the players walked off, that there were still two sessions to play just emphasised how hopeless the Nottinghamshire position had become.

Lunchtime was spent standing at the back of the Hound Road Stand having a relaxed chat with another travelling Somerset supporter. There was no tension. Somerset were going to win this match. Even the spots of rain that had raised a frisson of anxiety half an hour before had retired from the fray leaving no sign that they might return. The sun was even trying to push through the cloud, now unthreatening and white. Our discussion centred on the morning’s play. Thomas Rew looked a natural, Jordan Hermann a find, Overton was back to his best, Jack Leach had found his rhythm again, were among the plusses we identified from what had been a superlative Somerset performance throughout the match. And then, I moved to the shade on the far side of the ground at the back of the Radcliff Road End lower terrace for the denouement because, without my hat, the sun was becoming too fierce for comfort in the Hound Road Stand.

The end was not long in coming. About three quarters of an hour to be precise. O’Neill continued to stand his ground and drove Ball through extra cover for another four. But his innings had that slight feeling of unreality about it that sometimes accompanies someone standing out for a while against the inevitable. You knew the end was coming, but O’Neill seemed to be playing as if the match was still in the balance. Pennington was less at home. His post-lunch boundary came from an inside edge off Overton while another ball off Overton reared at him forcing him to fend it down.

Eventually, he tried an expansive drive, again off Overton, who on this day was in no mood to be gainsaid. The ball targeted perhaps a sixth stump, swung away late, Pennington chased it and edged it low and bullet-like to Lewis Goldsworthy at backward point. The ball was never more than a foot off the ground and beginning to die as it reached Goldsworthy. I had a perfect view from the Radcliffe Road Stand. Goldsworthy, fielding at the Pavilion End, replicating the certainty with which Somerset had played this match, neatly scooped the ball up. Neither the ball, nor Pennington had stood a chance. Nottinghamshire 152 for 9. Pennington 15 in four minutes under an hour.

And then, finally, the end of O’Neill’s extended rearguard action. There was another four, this time a glance off Ball which took O’Neill to a well-deserved fifty from 94 balls. But, with Pennington gone, and Mohammed Ali the last man in, he found himself having to perform that oft repeated cricketing ballet of declining singles to a deep-set field for the first four balls of an over before trying to steal a single off the last two. The dance lasted but a short while as Overton and Ball continued their relentless assault. Perhaps inevitably, it was Overton who brought matters to a close. With five fielders around the bat, it was a spinner’s rather than a pace bowler’s field, Overton pitched short to Ali who pulled. The ball looped over the short leg fielder and into the hands of Ogborne at square leg. The catch ended, with no exaggeration, a consummate Somerset performance against the 2025 County Champions, top of the table in 2026 and unbeaten at Trent Bridge in the Championship for two years.

As I gathered my things together and stood to pack my bag, I dallied, trying to absorb what I had witnessed over the previous three and a half days. It was the best Somerset Championship performance that I had seen for some considerable time. I had been at Chester-le Street in 2025 and had watched the match against Essex at Taunton in the same year. I had witnessed those great one wicket wins at Taunton in recent years against Durham, Surrey and Essex. I was at that final hour demolition of Surrey at Taunton in 2024. Famous victories all. But they had all been won with Somerset coming from far behind, or in the case of Surrey, winning a match that had looked a nailed-on draw an hour before the close. Trent Bridge 2026 was different. Somerset had beaten one of the most powerful teams in the land by dominating them from the first morning to the last afternoon. Occasional famous victories from behind do not of themselves win Championships. A series of wins like this one across a season would. Never had the singing of Blackbird from the Somerset dressing room just above my head seemed so apposite, even if the participants might struggle to get a booking at The Royal Opera House.

Result. Somerset 310 (J.G. Hermann 106, T.H.S. Rew 68, A.M. Vaughan 66*, F.P. O’Neill 6-72) and 355 for 7 dec (T.H.S. Rew 127* J.E.K. Rew 50, J.G. Hermann 40). Nottinghamshire 193 (J.A. Haynes 57, L. Gregory 4-51, M.J. Leach 3-44) and 166 (F.P. O’Neill 54*, C. Overton 5-29). Somerset won by 306 runs. Somerset 21 points. Nottinghamshire 3 points.