County Championship: Fletcha Middleton guides Hampshire to win over Notts
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Hampshire's Fletcha Middleton hit half-centuries in both innings, scoring a total of 124 runs
LV= County Championship Division One, The Ageas Bowl, Southampton (day three): |
Nottinghamshire: 185 & 177: Duckett 51; Abbott 4-37, Abbas 3-67 |
Hampshire: 231 & 132-2: Middleton 65, Gubbins 54; Fletcher 1-3 |
Hampshire (19 pts) beat Nottinghamshire (3 pts) by eight wickets |
Hampshire put down a County Championship title marker with a comfortable eight-wicket victory over Nottinghamshire.
Aiming to win their first Championship for 50 years after two near misses, the hosts chased down 132 with ease thanks to Fletcha Middleton's second half-century of the match.
Middleton scored 65 and Nick Gubbins an unbeaten 54 after a 111-run second-wicket stand as Hampshire continued their 2022 form, when they won more games than any other team.
Mohammad Abbas claimed his 100th Hampshire wicket to return match figures of eight for 116 in the process of bowling Notts out for 177 - as their return to Division One earned them just three points to Hampshire's 19.
After Abbas' heroics, Felix Organ put some jitters in the pursuit as his hard-handed defensive push lifted to Ben Duckett at second slip.
But Middleton, buoyed by his first-innings 59, and Gubbins steadied the nerves and ticked off runs in a watchful manner after lunch - with Luke Fletcher sending down five successive maidens.
Middleton - whose father Tony played and now coaches at the county, and brother Finn is on the groundstaff - has taken to first-class cricket astonishingly well. He scored a half-century in his only previous innings, against a Sri Lanka development XI last summer, before two chanceless fifties here.
His second innings was completely unflustered as he serenely reached the milestone in 89 balls.
Gubbins laced his equally officious pursuit of the target with glittering straight drives and sweeps as he arrived at his fifty in 124 balls - his first since June last year - with his century stand with Middleton coming in 206 balls. Middleton was bowled by Patterson-White with 15 still required.
To a chorus of boos, tea was farcically taken with the scores level - with the additional 15 minutes already taken up. But the players returned for two deliveries bowled by wicketkeeper Tom Moores before James Vince struck the winning run.
Match report supplied by the ECB Reporters' Network.