Left Line and Length: June

Like a good middle-distance runner priming himself to attack the last third of a race, Notts have eased themselves into the leading pack in the County Championship and currently sit top, just in front of next week’s visitors to Trent Bridge, Somerset, with Warwickshire, Yorkshire and Middlesex, the team downed in a hugely impressive run-chase at Trent Bridge this week, also jostling in a tight contest.

 

Knocking off 385 for the loss of just four wickets against Middlesex has taken care of the first part of a big week, while last night’s T20 Blast win over Leicestershire was, in the end, emphatic, but there’s more to do with another important home fixture against Derbyshire tonight. Indeed, Notts’ home form in the revamped T20 – mainly Friday nights through the season rather than a bloc in June and July – has been decidedly ordinary, following up an opening day demolition of Lancashire with three straight home defeats. To offset that they have on-the-road wins at East Midlands rivals Derby and Leicester, and will probably need to win five, maybe six of their final eight games in order to make the quarter-finals.

 

All three home defeats were failed run-chases and, to be frank, a couple of them – Worcestershire and Warwickshire – were a bit limp, while the chase against Durham was also one they ought to have pulled off. It’s all a bit perplexing, since Trent Bridge has been something of a fortress over the last three seasons – during the group stages at least, with Notts romping through to the quarter finals (all three at home because of said qualifying record) before coming unstuck against Somerset, Hampshire and Essex, and duly missing out on finals day. They need to find the right combination quickly, or else risk failing to do justice to the undoubted talent they have at their disposal.   

 

 

But that’s not the main problem. The main problem has been his batting. Last year he was batting in the middle order as a finisher; this year, with him picking the order, he has been going in at No3, and if that happens to be in the power play his game isn’t hugely suited to it… With Hales and Lumb recently England’s opening pair and Patel the best all-round player, it seemed obvious to get another, more forceful shotmaker into the top three, and to let Taylor use his strength – mental toughness – to set up the endgame at No5. Thankfully, the penny dropped before the trip to his former club and Riki Wessels’ promotion to No3 appears to have solved that problem.

 

That said, Notts lower middle-order looks a wee bit short on six-hitting firepower. In the past, David Hussey has been lurking there, ready to muscle Notts’ run-chases home on the slower pitches, against spinners, that have been their undoing this time. Read is a similarly busy and diminutive player to Taylor – albeit with a freer, more natural swing of the bat – while Steve Mullaney and Sam Wood aren’t explosive players. You wonder how long it will be before Mick Newell bites the bullet and dips into the overseas market. The IPL finished three weeks ago and the Caribbean Premier League is due to begin in three weeks, but there still might be an opportunity to sign a player capable of scoring 45 off 25 in the clutch overs. They might even go for a frontline mystery spinner, given the excellence of Saeed Ajmal and Sunil Narine. Watch this space.

 

With Mick Newell’s straight talking and calmly authoritative stewardship at Notts having been rewarded with his appointment as an England selector, Harry Gurney’s own excellence in white-ball cricket has seen him given a well deserved England call-up, replacing tattooed trickster Jade Dernbach on death-bowling duties. Gurney has a good repertoire of yorkers and slower balls, is quicker than he looks, but may need to add in-swing if he’s going to consistently trouble the best players. As it is, a good start.

 

No doubt Newell is being heavily leant upon by Samit Patel, too, a man who has been in sparkling early-season form and probably feels he had a good claim on the place that eventually went to Moeen Ali.

 

Then there’s Alex Hales, whose wretched red-ball season last year now appears well behind him, as he followed a blistering 167 at Hove with a pair of 90-odds in the Middlesex game. Already firmly established in the T20 side, his sights will now be set on breaking into the 50-over side in time for next year’s World Cup. That he isn’t there already might be considered, if not preposterous then symptomatic of English cricket’s innate conservatism, with three of the top four slots going to Test specialists Cook, Bell and Root, none of whom are renowned as six-hitters.

 

In theory, Cook’s place would be most vulnerable. But he’s the captain. Meanwhile, England refuse to pick for 50-over cricket a man recently considered the world’s leading T20 batsman. It’s like saying to someone who’s world-class at 5-a-side that they’re not quite ready for 7-a-side. Bizarre.

 

The Outlaws’ defence of English cricket’s longer-form short-form competition – the rebranded Royal London Cup, expanded from 40 to 50 overs – starts on 24 July. This will be Hales’ first shop window in the 50-over game. It will also see Peter Siddle playing some white-ball cricket, with it having been agreed that he would sit out the T20 in an effort to manage his workload a little.  

 

In the meantime, Notts’ sights will be set on Championship success, the competition Mick Newell considers his bread and butter. And the Middlesex win will give great heart for the second half of the season, although the truth is that Notts still haven’t found top gear in four-day cricket. In fact, their other two wins during this campaign were against the two promoted sides: Lancashire, in the season opener, and an innings victory over whipping boys, Northants. Having said that, the games against Durham, Sussex and Yorkshire all suffered severely from precipitation cessations.

 

A quick perusal of the Division One stats and it’s not too difficult to see where the strengths and the problems have lain. Notts currently have five of the division’s top nine run-scorers, with Samit Patel (2nd), Riki Wessels (4th), James Taylor (6th), Phil Jaques (7th) and Chris Read (9th) all having prolific summers.

 

On the bowling front, however, the top wicket-taker, Peter Siddle, sits only fourteenth in the divisional stats, with 24 wickets from his eight games. Perhaps the increasingly flat pitches at Trent Bridge haven’t helped matters – and the fact that there has been only one five-fer taken at home would support that. Siddle may not quite have hit top form as yet, but is clearly a class act, while Carter, Luke Fletcher and Ajmal Shahzad have all had their moments. Gurney, not yet the finished article, is vastly improved and offers variety, while Andre Adams will be patched up and wheeled out as long as he remains a wicket threat against top players. On paper, it’s a solid group to choose from, but they will need to have one or two find a bit of extra magic in the run-in.

 

Perhaps the major hole in the bowling attack is, as ever, the lack of a frontline spinner. Truth is, there aren’t many around – England’s selectors don’t believe there’s a single one in the country worthy of a Test place. It won’t have escaped one of those selectors, Mick Newell’s attention that James Tredwell – England’s first-choice spinner in limited-overs cricket – cannot get in Kent’s four-day team at present so might be one to target. Possibly, but that’s for down the track. Meanwhile, don’t be surprised if there’s a role for veteran left-arm spinner Gary Keedy in a couple of games at the back end of the season.

 

Joint top of the table, with a potent squad filled with international players, and others like Wessels, Steve Mullaney, Carter and Fletcher who perform solidly – not a huge amount to complain about at Trent Bridge, but plenty of room for improvement.

 

Nottinghamshire CCC website