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Worcestershire 220 for 6 (Jones 90, Harrison 3-78) trail Nottinghamshire 399 (Clarke 105, James 96, Smith 3-67) by 179 runs
It was a welcome return to runs earlier for James, who played every match last campaign but managed a top score of only 50 after finishing 2022 with a career-best 164 not out. Needing 27 from 30 balls for a third batting point some 40 minutes into play, he helped ensure 25 were suddenly plundered from Adam Finch’s next two overs.
But when his stand with Harrison, begun 25 minutes after tea on Friday, finally ended 30 minutes from the scheduled lunch, James, then on 87, saw two more fall in five overs. Harrison miscued to a running, tumbling Jake Libby at deep mid-on for 52 before Liam Patterson-White went to Brett D’Oliveira’s occasional leg-breaks, the captain then running out Luke Fletcher with a direct hit.
With the last pair together, the interval delayed and far-flung fields allowing him only refused singles, James eventually swatted a Finch full-toss that seemed waist-high straight to mid-wicket and lingered in vain for it to be called no-ball.
There was no such doubt, however, about the peremptory end of both Worcestershire openers within eight balls of the reply. Fletcher, in his first match this year, put behind him an injury-hit 2023 by removing Gareth Roderick without score and Pennington saw Libby stupendously taken one-handed by Harrison, diving full length at third slip.
It was a rare failure for one of four men in this game playing against their old side as Libby, who left Nottingham in autumn 2019, fell for two after posting 1051 runs at 75.07 in his last nine games.
In an unstinting and hostile second spell of nine overs, Pennington then ended a recovery to within 20 minutes of tea that had added 78 and Kashif Ali had suggested he might surge away once more following his two hundreds in the opening game.
On 40, however, his strokeplay grew too outrageous. Walking away to leg and slashing hard, he top-edged Pennington to deep backward point where Jack Haynes took a superb sprinting catch. By the interval it was 90 for three and another 65 were added at four an over before Harrison’s late strikes.
Hose top-edged a pull and skied back to the bowler for a brisk 33 and Jones, too, returned a catch, one the Harrison sprawled to accept, the umpires together deciding it had just carried. When Holder edged to slip, Worcestershire were left needing a big seventh-wicket stand of their own.
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