Will Jacks took career-best figures of 7/129 on an intriguing third day at Trent Bridge, which also saw 19-year-old Freddie McCan score his maiden First Class century
Surrey bowled Nottinghamshire out for 405 in the evening session and ended the third day of their Vitality County Championship match 133 ahead on 13-1.
On 144-3 overnight after the nightwatchman had gone to what proved Friday’s final ball, the home side lost Joe Clarke in the morning’s fourth full over when, rashly, he advanced to launch a straight drive at Jacks only to be stumped as the ball spun sharply out of the rough trough thew gate. Clarke, gone for four, was Jacks’s third success in 11 balls after his breakthroughs the previous evening.
He remained a threat at the end from which fellow off-spinner Fahran Ahmed had taken seven wickets on the opening two days. But, with Haynes surviving an early alarm when edging a Cam Steel leg-break between wicketkeeper and slip on three, resistance of some character brought lunch at 231-4.
The partnership had added 154 when McCann departed after 268 balls of high application straight after Haynes had posted a sixth fifty in his 15 innings since joining from Worcestershire. None of these though has passed 77 and the pattern continued when, glancing, his thin legside edge was taken behind.
Kyle Verreynne, the South Africa wicketkeeper in his maiden county innings after arriving as Nottinghamshire’s third overseas player this season, was joined by Lyndon James to see the innings to 369-4 at tea. But two overs after they had averted the follow-on, James, slicing a drive to backward point for 23, gave Steel his first success in completing 22 of the 110 overs.
With bonus points decided as five to Surrey, four to Notts, Liam Patterson-White was leg-before, one run later, giving Jacks his only six-wicket bag since his success at Rawalpindi in the first of his two Tests, against Pakistan in 2022. He had bowled a mere six championship overs hitherto this year.
Rob Lord, on debut, came and went for 10 to Steel and Ahmed to Jacks without score as the final four fell for 21 in 30 balls, leaving Verreyyne unbeaten on 50 from just 60 balls. Leading by 120 on first innings, Surrey then faced spin at both ends from the off.
It took Ahmed eight balls to add to his match tally when Dom Sibley clipped to mid-wicket but after seven overs bad light intervened with eleven of the day’s quota left unbowled. Surrey’s pursuit of an eighth win in nine games and a third successive championship title was put on hold for the night
