Nottinghamshire v Yorkshire, day three:

Yorkshire 264 (Nash 3-20) and 259-7 (Chappell 3-49), Nottinghamshire 355 (Moores 106)

As Tom Moores remarked in the aftermath of his match-changing hundred, day three is moving day.

The day when the mist begins to clear, and the game truly begins to take shape.

On this occasion, however, most of the movement took place in two ten-minute spells, as the game lurched forwards in the afternoon and evening.

Three Yorkshire wickets fell in the space of eighteen mid-afternoon deliveries – and, in the context of this game, it is hard to think of three more crucial.

First, Samit Patel had Adam Lyth caught at first slip for 50.

Next, a well-set Jonny Bairstow (75) fell victim to a short-leg snaffle of the highest quality, Haseeb Hameed diving one-handed to pluck the ball out of thin air to his right.

Then another close catch for Hameed, again off the bowling of Matthew Carter, sent Dawid Malan on his way.

With Chappell snaring two further wickets inside an over towards the close, having removed Tom Kohler-Cadmore in the morning session, all four results remain firmly on the table heading into the final day.

At times on Monday afternoon, however, that was a far from foregone conclusion.

A stand of 131 between Lyth and Bairstow, after a pinpoint delivery from Chappell drew Kohler-Cadmore’s edge, threatened to take Yorkshire to a position of security.

Theirs was the partnership which took the visitors into the lead, with only the occasional strangled appeal breaking the behind-closed-doors silence.

But First-Class cricket is a tough old game. It’s why they call its highest form a Test.

One performance, one partnership, even one innings, are not enough to ensure the result goes a certain way.

And after the game had threatened to ebb away from Notts, the wickets began to flow.

That three-wicket burst was followed by an admirable rebuilding job from Harry Brook and Jonny Tattersall, the former more of the aggressor as they put on fifty runs together.

Two balls after reaching the half-century stand, the pair were able to take tea satisfied with their afternoon’s work.

Two balls into the evening session, Brook was making his way back to his seat in the Pavilion, looping a catch to Steven Mullaney off Patel.

Tattersall and Jordan Thompson mounted something of a recovery thereafter – although, by scoring 54 runs off 180 balls, if the game could have been said to have moved forwards, it had done so inch by painstaking inch.

But then came another jolt of momentum, Chappell inducing an edge from Thompson.

Four balls later Steven Patterson was similarly foxed, playing at a ball he realised he should have left long before it hit Tom Moores’ gloves.

168 the lead at stumps, with three Yorkshire wickets in hand. The 1960s TV show Stingray might have opened with the words ‘anything can happen in the next half-hour’, but this fixture can go much further than that.

At least six hours of play are scheduled for tomorrow. The outcome is anybody’s guess.

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