Notts lead reduced following Yorkshire draw

Pocketing 12 points for a draw with Yorkshire was enough to keep Nottinghamshire top of the County Championship table with eight of 14 matches played.

They now find defending champions Surrey breathing down their necks, though, after the match at Trent Bridge ended in stalemate, the game coming to an end when the home side declared on 148-1 in their second innings.

Notts led by 10 points going into this round but Surrey's victory over Worcestershire at New Road has closed the gap to two ahead of next week's second batch of fixtures with the Kookaburra ball.

Matthew Revis supplemented Finlay Bean's superb double-hundred for with an unbeaten 93 but with Yorkshire's first innings stretching to lunch on day four before they were bowled out for 510 on a generally benign pitch, the chances of a positive outcome were almost non-existent.

Part-time off-spinner Freddie McCann finished with a career-best 3-53 before Notts opener Ben Slater passed 50 for the sixth consecutive innings - four of them against Yorkshire - in making an unbeaten 74.

All-rounder Liam Patterson-White, who had 3-129 from 52 overs of left-arm spin overnight, could not add to his wickets tally in Yorkshire's first innings, but the additional 10 overs in his final analysis of 3-146 put him 10th in Nottinghamshire's table of bowling marathons.

Not since 1929, when off-spinner Sam Staples sent down 408 deliveries - also against Yorkshire - to claim fourth spot in that list, has any bowler exceeded Patterson-White's 372 bowled in a single first-class innings for the county.

Farhan Ahmed, the 17-year-old off-spinner, bowled 50 overs for his 1-126, although it is not the first time he has hit that milestone despite this being only his 13th match.

In the draw against Surrey on the same ground last year - also played with the Kookaburra ball - he broke all manner of records in taking his career-best 7-140 on his Championship debut, and was in his 51st over when he took his final wicket.

With little help for the seam bowlers, Nottinghamshire had hoped that a used, hybrid pitch in the prevailing dry conditions might provide significant assistance to the spinners.

Yet though two thirds of the Yorkshire innings was against spin, there was never enough turn to seriously unsettle the more capable batters.

McCann found some turn, bowling George Hill (30) and Jack White - the former via an inside edge - and having Dom Bess (26) stumped, but by then the Yorkshire innings was beginning to peter out.

Yorkshire's left-armer, Dan Moriarty, bowled Haseeb Hameed, but Nottinghamshire were otherwise untroubled through the 48 overs that remained in the match - even when Yorkshire skipper Jonny Bairstow, having handed the wicketkeeping gloves to Bean for the final session, brought himself on to bowl in what turned out to be the last over of the match.

His over of what appeared to be off-spin was only his second in professional cricket, the other - also wicketless - having been against Durham in 2014.

Nottinghamshire next travel to Somerset on Sunday, with second-placed Surrey meeting Durham at The Oval.

ECB Reporters' Network supported by Rothesay

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