Freddie McCann’s fifty helped Nottinghamshire to a slender but crucial lead before Josh Tongue once more ripped through Worcestershire to set up the prospect of a three-day victory at New Road.
After the visitors had resumed on 46-1, trailing overall by 136, McCann’s battling 56 defied 4/70 from Tom Taylor and Ben Allison’s 3/41 to help his side to 207 all out, a 25-run first-innings advantage.
Tongue then blew away the batting line-up of his former side, claiming 3/24 to reduce their second innings to 93-5, just 68 in front, before bad light called a premature end to proceedings.
Having resumed in bright sunlight, the antithesis to the stormy and overcast conditions that enveloped much of the opening day, McCann profited to post his fourth half-century of the season in 92 balls.
He and Joe Clarke, who made 34, helped Nottinghamshire past three figures and to 121-4 at lunch, trailing by just 61, in their quest for a first-innings lead.
Left-hander McCann proved particularly effective through the off-side, striking seven fours in his 106-ball innings, before Matthew Waite had him caught behind just before the first break.
Clarke and Kyle Verreynne, however, continued to battle on, and despite both falling in the afternoon, Lyndon James’ brisk 35 was instrumental in helping Notts into the lead.
All but seven runs of James’ innings came from the boundary, as he helpfully supported Verreynne to pull the Green and Golds to within ten of parity.
Having sparkled with the ball on the first day, Tongue and Dillon Pennington then made some especially handy lower-order runs to turn 184-8 into a more pleasant-looking 207-9.
Allison and Waite finished off the innings, with the latter returning 2/33 and Khurram Shahzad taking 1/48, but that left the ball in the hands of the fearsome Tongue.
The highlight of his three-wicket burst was a snorter of a delivery to see off Jake Libby for 25, bouncing up and taking the glove on the way through to McCann in the slips.
That was not, though, McCann’s highlight catch of the innings, with that honour instead unarguably going to the stupendous, full-stretch grab he took off James to remove Dan Lategan for eight.
James also bowled D’Oliveira for the fifth wicket of the innings, backing up the further two that Tongue claimed, those of Rehaan Edavalath, lbw for nine, and Kashif Ali, bowled for 16.
It was a 36-over bowling performance full of hostility from the entire Green and Gold attack, and gave realistic hope that a three-day victory over Division One’s basement side could be very much within their reach.
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