Specsavers County Championship Division One, Emirates Old Trafford (day four)
Lancashire 158 & 73: Gurney 6-25; Ball 4-14
Nottinghamshire 222 & 10-4: Mennie 3-4
Nottinghamshire (20 pts) beat Lancashire (3 pts) by six wickets
It only took Nottinghamshire 90 minutes to wrap up victory on the final day of their Specsavers County Championship match against Lancashire at Emirates Old Trafford.
This is Nottinghamshire’s first win in Division One since their opening game of the 2016 campaign, when they beat Surrey by three wickets at Trent Bridge.
Lancashire began the day on 58-2, trailing by six runs – with Liam Livingstone and Keaton Jennings returning to the crease.
It didn’t take long for the visitors to make their first breakthrough. In fact, it only took them three balls, as Harry Gurney pinned Keaton Jennings on the crease for 27. The 25-year-old failed to add to his overnight score.
58-3 soon became 62-4 as Shiv Chanderpaul didn’t make a contribution in the innings. He fell without troubling the scorers, having been caught by Ross Taylor off the bowling of Gurney to give the latter his second wicket of the morning in as many overs.
There was shortly something for Lancashire fans to applaud, and that was the fact that their side had gained a lead.
The onslaught from Gurney and Jake Ball continued as Liam Livingstone was the next man to depart. The Lancashire skipper departed for 12 having added two boundaries to his overnight score.
At 66-5, Lancashire needed to take a moment to reassess the situation and regroup, but instead they lost a further two wickets on the same score with Steven Croft and Jordan Clark sent trudging back to the pavilion for ducks.
With being seven wickets down and only having a lead of three, the hosts were staring defeat in the face, unless a miracle was to occur.
Having further extended their lead to nine, Lancashire then lost three wickets for no score to end up 73 all out.
The pick of the Nottinghamshire bowlers was indeed Gurney, who returned figures of 6-25 to finish with match figures of 8-43.
His bowling partner this morning, Jake Ball, finished the innings with figures of 4-14 to give him match figures of 9-57.
Lancashire captain Livingstone paid compliments to the Nottinghamshire bowlers after the game, saying: “The Notts bowlers have bowled really well, the pitch has quickened up a little bit. I think we played some average shots but credit to them they bowled pretty well.”
After taking 8-15 runs this morning in just 56 minutes, Nottinghamshire required 10 runs to secure victory.
What seemed like the most straightforward of targets, soon looked like an uphill struggle as they lost a wicket in reply – Steven Mullaney the man to depart.
Chris Nash and Jake Libby fell in successive balls to leave debutant Joe Mennie on a hat-trick, with the score at 5-3.
Lancashire still weren’t finished however, as Graham Onions removed Ross Taylor for none – Livingstone with yet another catch to leave the Trent Bridge outfit on 9-4.
Riki Wessels then struck the winning run to seal a six wicket victory.
The next assignment for Lancashire is a trip to Chelmsford, where they will take on defending champions Essex in the Specsavers County Championship.
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