Clarke ton steers Notts to draw with Lancashire

England's James Anderson had match figures of 8-64 for Lancashire

Vitality County Championship Division One, Southport (day four)

Lancashire: 353-9 dec Jennings 187*, Balderson 41; James 4-61

Nottinghamshire 126 & 270-4 Clarke 115*, James 47*, Hameed 41; Lyon 2-65

Lancashire (14 pts) drew with Nottinghamshire (10 pts)

Match scorecard

Joe Clarke made his fourth century of the season and blunted the threat posed by James Anderson to ensure that Nottinghamshire drew their County Championship match with Lancashire at Southport.

Clarke passed fifty for the seventh time in 14 first-class innings this season and had put on an unbroken 136 for the fifth wicket with Lyndon James.

They had steered the visitors to 270-4 when the players shook hands at 4.50pm, leaving Clarke 115 not out, bringing his first-class aggregate for the season to 795, and James unbeaten on 43.

By contrast to his astonishing spell on Tuesday morning, Anderson had figures of 1-25 from 11 overs in two spells on the final day, but the eight points the sides collect for the draw enables both of them to pull a little further away from Division One’s relegation zone.

Notts, though, were deducted one point for a slow over-rate.

Anderson took his only wicket of the second innings with his 17th ball of the day when Will Young pushed tentatively forward and edged a catch to Matthew Hurst.

Clarke and Jack Haynes then steadied the ship and the latter hooked Tom Bailey for a six onto the Southport to Liverpool railway linen narrowly missing a fast-moving train by seconds.

In the next over, though, Haynes was caught behind off Chris Green, thus giving the Australian off-spinner his maiden first-class wicket for Lancashire on his Championship debut.

No more wickets fell until lunch by which time home spectators could reflect on a session in which they had been treated to the sight of Nathan Lyon bowling in tandem with Anderson, a pairing that has taken a combined 1,230 Test wickets.

Regardless of who he was facing though, Clarke continued to bat with careful fluency, lapping Lyon for four to fine leg, pulling him onto the railway line and reaching his fifty in 107 balls.

Nottinghamshire lunched on 164-4 and were therefore only 63 runs in arrears.

But the prospect of Anderson with the new ball in his hand was enough to have those supporters looking anxiously at the sky and wondering when the forecast rain might arrive.

Anderson duly took the new ball two overs into the afternoon session but had delivered five wicketless overs for 16 runs when rain swept in from the west at 2.20pm.

Contrary to some expectations, play resumed at 4.00pm with a minimum of 33 overs to be bowled and Clarke and James played with increasing freedom, taking their side into the lead before Clarke reached his century off 185 balls with a square cut off Luke Wells.

Report supplied by ECB Reporters' Network.