Notts Are County Champions

For the first time since 2010 and for the seventh time in history (post 1890) Nottinghamshire are cricket’s county champions, the best in the land, after securing the points they needed against Warwickshire, to take the title, to become the 2025 Rothesay County Championship Division One winners.

Many will say, the hard work, was done last week, in an epic win against Surrey at the Oval, which saw Notts climb from second place in the table to top, with a fourteen point advantage, needing just to match, or better, or even slightly worsen the efforts of Surrey in their final game at Hampshire, to be assured of success, and that was done with complexity, after Surrey struggled to gain any batting points at the Rose Bowl during their first innings, that left Nottinghamshire needing just five points to take the title, and they did that by bowling out their final day opponents Warwickshire in day one at Trent Bridge, to gain three bowling points, and the further two batting points, came when they collected their 300th run during their first innings on day two, which came when South African wicket-keeping batter Kyle Verreynne smashed a six to start joyful celebrations around the famous old ground.

By close of play on Thursday, Notts were in commanding position to close their season with a win, having bowled out Warwickshire for 258, they in return scored 374 and had their visitors 7/3 in their second innings overnight, they’ll be hoping to wrap things up in style today/tomorrow, but regardless of win or draw, they will still take the title, from Surrey, who had previously won the last three championships during a dominant era for the south Londoners.

After their Oval heroics last week, where Notts won a nervous and tense battle by just 20 runs, it was all about getting the job done at Trent Bridge, and within two days of four, Peter Moores side did just that, and he himself becomes the only coach in over a century to win three County titles with three different teams.

He was helped, as he has been all season, by his marvellous bowling attack, after an edgy start against Warwickshire in the seasons final game, the likes of Brett Hutton, Mohammed Abbas, Dillon Pennington and co, ripped into their opponents during the last session of day one, to take maximum bowling points, and bowl out their opponents to give themselves hope, of scoring the runs needed in day two, to take the title, their first since 2015.

And whilst it wasn’t all straight forward, helped, as they have been all season, by captain, talisman, Haseeb Hameed, who’s incredible fine form continues, his 122 nudging Notts closer to goal, he’s now scored 1253 runs for the season at an average over 65, only Dom Sibley has more runs, but it was a South African, who scored the winning runs in the world test championship final against Australia earlier this year, that would do the all important ‘point scoring’ as he blasted an edgy Notts towards and past target of 300 and those 2 batting points, alongside Liam Patterson-White who hit 70, Kyle Verreynne in the end hitting a huge 83 to give Notts a 116 run lead, which was by the close of night reduced to 109, but for a loss of 3 wickets, as the jubilant attack of Abbas (2 for 4) and Hutton (1 for 2) made things even better for the newly crowned champions, as they head into day three, with seven Warwickshire wickets remaining, and a whole second innings of hitters ready if needed, Notts will be hoping to crown off the perfect season, with the perfect ending, by taking victory along with the points already secured, to send everyone off with even more smiles over the winter where Notts will be for 2025 ever-known, the best of all.