Rothesay County Championship, Division One, Trent Bridge (day four)

Somerset 310 & 355-7 dec: T Rew 127*

Nottinghamshire 193 & 166: O’Neill 54*; Overton 5-29

Somerset (21 pts) beat Notts (3 pts) by 306 runs

Match scorecard

Needing seven more Nottinghamshire wickets at the start of the day, Somerset got home with consummate ease at Trent Bridge to claim their third win of this year’s County Championship campaign.

Nottinghamshire, in theory requiring 426 when resuming on 47-3, were bowled out for 166 giving Somerset victory by a mammoth 306 runs.

This was the reigning champions first defeat at home in 14 games, and only their second in their past 23 overall.

Jake Ball, a substitute at tea on Sunday for injured Somerset skipper Lewis Gregory, took 2-33 against his old county but it was Craig Overton (5-29) who swept aside three of the six specialist batters.

Fergus O’Neill, with a doughty unbeaten 54 at number nine, was the one man to pass 25.

The Australian, supported by Dillon Pennington, took the game beyond a delayed lunch as the pair summoned belated resolve through 18 overs to add 48 for the ninth wicket, but Somerset finished clear title contenders in a race now even tighter.

Almost before the home side had time to blink they found three batters back in the dressing room within the first 10 overs.

Joe Clarke, who had become this year’s highest run-scorer in the course of the game, lost his off stump to Ball’s inswinger for four.

Clarke, who arrived just before Sunday’s close but had not faced, took a boundary from Ball’s wayward opening delivery of the morning only to be undone by his eighth.

His overnight partner, home captain Haseeb Hameed, enduring a poor season with the bat after his outstanding 2025, just hinted that fortunes might have changed.

But having added 13 to reach 25, his thin edge at a wide legside Overton ball was caught behind, typifying Hameed’s summer so far. He now averages 23.75.

Worse followed for Lyndon James who completed a pair in a match to forget when, driving in Overton’s next over, he edged to Tom Rew whose own match he will remember forever.

After his magnificent maiden century on Sunday, Rew, keeping wicket, dived at full stretch to hold the chance superbly.

Now 75-6, Nottinghamshire showed every chance of not reaching the interval but Jack Haynes was joined by Liam Patterson-White in a partnership which was to prove the longest of the day’s first half dozen, albeit just 38 balls.

With Overton rested after his six morning overs brought 2-17, Migael Pretorius came on at the Radcliffe Road End to remove the new batter with his ninth ball. Driving, Patterson-White was held low by Overton, now at second slip.

South African Pretorius gained his second success six overs later when Haynes’ defensive edge gave Rew his fourth catch of the innings.

There had just been ironic cheers from the few faithful spectators still in the stands when the innings passed three figures but Haynes, out for 24, left the tally at 104-8.

Only then did resistance materialise, O’Neill and Pennington perhaps making a point to the batters. They were finally parted when Pennington, slicing a drive to square cover for 15, gave Overton his fourth wicket.

Even then, refusing singles with last man Mohammad Ali now in, O’Neill would not concede, reaching his sixth career fifty from 94 balls before Ali fell in a tangle with a bouncer, lobbing a catch to the infield as Overton completed his first five-wicket haul since September.

It was by no means Somerset’s greatest championship triumph by runs – they had beaten Kent at Bath by 419 runs in 1939.

They now meet Warwickshire on Friday while Nottinghamshire visit Essex.

Report by ECB Reporters’ Network, supported by Rothesay.