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Draw on the cards after attritional day three
Haseeb Hameed made a double hundred on day three but the Rothesay County Championship contest between Nottinghamshire and Somerset looks almost certain to end in a draw.
With half-centuries from Jack Haynes (70) and Lyndon James (72), Nottinghamshire finished the day at 511 for six in their first innings for a lead of 73. Yet the combination of a dead pitch and the Kookaburra ball seems to have left no realistic route to a positive result on the final day.
Notts began this round – the 11th of the 14 – a point behind Surrey but the latter’s victory against Durham at Chester-le-Street puts clear daylight between them and the chasing pack, although Nottinghamshire still have to go to the Kia Oval in September. Somerset, in third place, will also have had one eye on the game at Durham.
Somerset’s verdict on the conditions was made evident by skipper Lewis Gregory’s decision not to bother with the second new ball, spinner Archie Vaughan bowling the final delivery of the day with a ball that was 151 overs old.
Hameed’s 208 – which ended, to his misfortune, when he was run out responding to a team-mate’s call – takes his tally for the season to 1,108 as the leading runscorer in the Rothesay County Championship.
A day that will not stay long in the memory began with Nottinghamshire cutting 82 runs from an overnight deficit of 249 and losing one wicket when Joe Clarke chipped Gregory to short midwicket for 42.
The afternoon was a little more entertaining, mainly for Craig Overton assuming the role of pantomime villain in his efforts to unseat Hameed, largely by bowling a legside line, often banging the ball in short.
Frustrated when the Nottinghamshire skipper was almost out on 137 immediately after lunch – edging wide enough for wicketkeeper James Rew to reach the ball with his fingertips but not catch it – Overton also saw Hameed’s failed attempt to pull him on 152 ended with the opener desperately trying to kick the ball away from his stumps as it dropped over his shoulder.
Amid all this, Gregory appeared to have decided that taking the second new ball would aid only the batting side in providing more pace on to the bat from a pitch that itself had none to offer.
Nonetheless, the fourth wicket partnership of Hameed and Haynes were able to achieve enough acceleration to claim three batting bonus points within the 110-over specified time, giving them five from the match to Somerset’s four, Haynes then becoming the sole casualty of the afternoon, his dismissal to Gregory almost a duplicate of Clarke’s.
They had added 123, and with James, a double centurion himself only last week, now at the other end, Hameed might have envisaged another profitable alliance as Nottinghamshire sought to end the day with the upper hand.
In the event, after lifting Vaughan gloriously over long-off to complete his third career double-ton with a 23rd four to go with two earlier sixes, Hameed was soon gone, although through no fault of his own, run out brilliantly by the combination of Tom Lammonby and Rew after James had called him through for a single to extra cover.
James played nicely again, adding 88 with Liam Patterson-White for the sixth wicket before he was caught on the midwicket boundary.
