Nottinghamshire (185 all out, 146/6) lead Hampshire (231 all out) by 100 runs with 4 wickets remaining.
Should you have welcomed in the Easter weekend with a day at The Ageas Bowl, you would have been forgiven for thinking we were in the height of summer.
With Hampshire’s headquarters bathed in sunshine, shorts and t-shirts were the order of the day for some of the crowd enjoying some Good Friday cricket.
The action on the field, however, had all the hallmarks of the early knockings of a Championship summer, with 13 wickets falling for the second consecutive day.
Dane Paterson, wicketless on day one, was the first seamer to make the most of a pitch which aided the bowler, trapping Liam Dawson (24) LBW before ending Fletcha Middleton’s top-scoring knock of 59, the opener caught behind by Tom Moores.
Ben Brown and Ian Holland arrested the Green and Golds’ momentum in the following hour of cricket, edging themselves up towards Notts’ first innings total of 185.
But Luke Fletcher was never far away from troubling the hosts’ batters.
Building on his dismissal of Nick Gubbins on day one, the Bulwell Bomber removed Brown (26) and Holland (31) either side of the lunch interval.
Tom Moores had remarked on the evening of day one that "there’s always a ball with your name on it" in the Southampton pitch, something which can go a long way to explaining why 59 is the highest score in the fixture to date.
Keith Barker and James Fuller continued that trend, reaching 19 and 21 before falling to Olly Stone and Paterson respectively.
The South African's dismissal of James Fuller brought an end to the Hampshire innings on 231, a lead of 46.
Ben Duckett and Haseeb Hameed opened up for Notts and once again were untroubled in the early stages, wiping off the deficit inside ten overs.
Hameed would fall for 27, edging to slip off Barker, but Notts took tea on 75/1. And with Duckett notching the first Nottinghamshire half-century of the summer after the break, the visitors were moving into a strong position.
Kyle Abbott's inspired spell of probing fast bowling, however, accounted for Duckett (51), Lyndon James and Joe Clarke, the latter pair without scoring, to wrestle the momentum back towards the hosts in this low-scoring encounter.
A tricky period followed, with Hampshire’s main three seamers, ably supported by James Fuller, applied the pressure under the setting sun.
Ben Slater provided the highlights of the evening session from a Notts point of view, finding the off-side boundary on multiple occasions.
The returning Barker brought an end to his innings on 43 though, before Abbott prized out scalp number four, skipper Mullaney trapped in front for 12.
Stone was promoted to number eight as he ended the day in the company of Tom Moores in the middle, with the visitors' lead reaching three figures at stumps.
*******
Nottinghamshire Membership
Join us as part of the privileged in 2023 to enjoy access to all 39 scheduled days of home cricket involving Notts, priority booking for home knockout ties and a plethora of perks.
