Just 21 wickets in four days at Trent Bridge as spinners struggle to exploit hybrid pitch
ECB Reporters Network supported by Rothesay 25-Jun-2025Pocketing 12 points for a draw was enough to keep Nottinghamshire top of the Rothesay County Championship table with eight of 14 matches played, although they now find defending champions Surrey breathing down their necks after the match against Yorkshire at Trent Bridge ended in stalemate.Nottinghamshire led Division One by 10 points going into this round but Surrey’s victory over Worcestershire at New Road has closed the gap to two ahead of next week’s second batch of fixtures with the Kookaburra ball, when Surrey meet Durham at the Kia Oval and Nottinghamshire travel to Somerset.Matthew Revis supplemented Finlay Bean’s superb double-hundred for with an unbeaten 93 but with Yorkshire’s first innings stretching to lunch on day four before Nottinghamshire could bowl them out for 510 on a generally benign pitch, the chances of a positive outcome were almost non-existent.Part-time off-spinner Freddie McCann finished with a career-best three for 53 before Nottinghamshire, who had made 487 in their first innings, reached 148 for one in their second innings, opener Ben Slater passing fifty for the sixth consecutive innings – four of them against Yorkshire – in making an unbeaten 74. The players shook hands on a draw at ten to five.All-rounder Liam Patterson-White, who was three for 129 from 52 overs of left-arm spin overnight, could not add to his wickets tally in Yorkshire’s first innings, but the additional 10 overs in his final analysis of three for 146 puts him 10th in Nottinghamshire’s table of bowling marathons.Not since 1929, when off-spinner Sam Staples sent down 408 deliveries – also against Yorkshire – to claim fourth spot in that list, has any bowler exceeded Patterson-White’s 372 bowled in a single first-class innings for the county.Farhan Ahmed, the 17-year-old off-spinner, bowled 50 overs for his one for 126, although it is not the first time he has hit that milestone despite this being only his 13th match. In the draw against Surrey here last year – also played with the Kookaburra ball – when he broke all manner of records in taking his career-best seven for 140 on his Championship debut, he was in his 51st over when he took his final wicket.With little help for the seam bowlers in using the Kookaburra ball, Nottinghamshire had hoped that a used, hybrid pitch in the prevailing dry conditions might provide significant assistance to the spinners. Yet though two thirds of the Yorkshire innings was against spin, there was never enough turn to unsettle the more capable batters hugely.McCann found some turn, bowling George Hill (30) and Jack White – the former via an inside edge – and having Dom Bess (26) stumped, but by then the Yorkshire innings was beginning to peter out. Will O’Rourke departed in a somewhat farcical run-out.Yorkshire’s left-armer, Dan Moriarty, bowled Haseeb Hameed, but Nottinghamshire were otherwise untroubled through the 48 overs that remained in the match – even when Yorkshire skipper Jonny Bairstow, having handed the wicketkeeping gloves to Bean for the final session, brought himself on to bowl in what turned out to be the last over of the match.His over of what appeared to be off-spin was only his second in professional cricket, the other – also wicketless – having been against Durham in 2014.
