Nick Browne shows character but out-of-sorts Essex continue malaise against Notts

JAMES COYNE AT TRENT BRIDGE: The reigning county champions have work to do after tomorrow's deluge to keep their title hopes healthy

Trent Bridge (second day of four): Essex 99 & 129-3, Nottinghamshire 323 - Essex trail by 95 runs with seven second-innings wickets remaining

Scorecard

How many games can you afford to lose in this long first round of the restructured County Championship? 

It’s a question that will be bobbing around the minds of several county coaches as the conference system reaches crunch time – and you’d imagine Anthony McGrath has paused to ponder it already. 

Because Essex, for some time the country’s pre-eminent team, are likely to fall to their second defeat out of five in the Championship so far, even with the bucket-load of rain forecast to land tomorrow. At 129 for 3, still 95 behind Nottinghamshire, they have a lot of work to do. 

Mercifully for them, Group One looks devilishly tight, and the change in points system to eight for a draw means that, for example, Worcestershire, are still in with a shout at a place in the crucial top two despite not winning a game yet. 

In this match, Essex have looked some way short of the county champions they are, with the caveat that the Trent Bridge pitch on which they had to bat on the first morning was clearly not the kind the ECB (and Joe Root) were wishing for when they remodelled the Championship. In contrast to the general trend of good batting pitches across the country this season, it was the kind of green top counties are supposed to be moving away from. 

Nick Browne, Essex’s standout batter in this match, called the opening day “roll of the dice cricket”, while admitting that his side ought to have made double what they did in the first innings. 

It was very much a green top rather than a rank bad pitch, and so by today it had browned off into a good batting surface, and with the clouds high and billowing today rather than low and brooding, it was no surprise Notts found it considerably easier. A groundsman will always say he leaves grass on to ensure bounce through the game and that was the case on day two.

Notts managed to blow plenty of promising positions during their 30-game, 1,043-day wait for a first-class win – ended last week at Derby – but they put the hammer down with renewed confidence today through their captain Steven Mullaney, who must be more fed up than anyone at their underwhelming four-day results. 

Mullaney pressed on this morning to his 16th first-class hundred, passing 8,000 runs, and gave Notts what should be a sufficient first-innings lead of 224 – with the qualification that Simon Harmer has performed miracles for Essex before with not many runs to bowl at in the last innings. 

Mullaney aside, the first half of the day belonged to the unheralded Shane Snater – a stocky, medium-fast seam bowler originally from Zimbabwe, who has played for the Netherlands thanks to a Dutch passport. He was called into the Essex XI here because they wanted to rest Sam Cook. Snater came to Essex’s attention when he took five wickets against their 2nd XI for a Netherlands Development XI at Southend in 2016, and with the convenience of an EU passport, they took something of a punt on him. 

Snater took three wickets yesterday and was on a hat-trick today after Lyndon James, having brought up his second first-class fifty, edged low to second slip, where Harmer took a superb one-handed catch, then Tom Moores feathered his first ball behind. 

The extent of Jamie Porter’s travails were evident from the fact Snater was preferred with the ball at three junctures – at the start of play, when the second new ball became available, and then after lunch. Porter has taken just six wickets in three-and-a-half games this season, and he didn’t find much lateral movement today with his very chest-on style. 

Though Snater couldn’t dislodge Mullaney – that was eventually achieved by Peter Siddle, who bowled him on 117 – he continued to chip away at the other end and claimed a career-best 7 for 98 as Notts were bowled out for 322. Snater's decision a few years back to relocate from Harare to Holland was looking a decent one now. 

^{Anthony McGrath's champions have made an uncertain start to the season}

With so many points available for the draw and heavy rain forecast for Saturday there was certainly no shortage of incentive for Essex to battle it out. 

They made a solid fist of their second innings against Notts’ three principal seamers, but then ran into trouble against James, who may look rakish and slightly innocuous as he runs in, but found useful movement off the wicket and always tested the outside edge in the best spell of the day. 

The 22-year-old had already seen Browne dropped on 18 at third slip by Haseeb Hameed when he took the prize wicket of Alastair Cook to end the opening stand at 63.

Cook, still searching for his first commanding score of the season, was on 35 when he stepped into a ball slanting across him from around the wicket and was struck in front. England’s record run-scorer looked upset to be given out, but it looks as though it would probably have hit leg stump; the only question was whether he got a tiny inside edge.

Jim Hindson, the former Notts left-arm spinner who is now commercial director of The Cricketer, played alongside James at Caythorpe in the Notts Premier League for three seasons before he broke into the county first-team this summer. 

He is impressed not just by James’ skill, but his approach: “He’s a very intelligent lad with a brilliant attitude. Although he has a pro deal he’s already training to be a fitness instructor outside of the game, and I always feel that kind of thinking is a good sign.

“He’s awesome to be around in club cricket. I stand at slip – a bit closer than you’d like to because of the club wickets – and you always feel like you’re in the game. He’s a skilful bowler.

“Notts weren’t sure where to put him at one stage – is he an opening batsman, is he an allrounder? – but the middle order seems to fit him well, and it will be interesting to see him develop.” 

Into the afternoon, neither of Tom Westley and Dan Lawrence, two Essex players who have made the England team with unorthodox methods, could stay with Browne. Westley was lured way outside off stump and couldn’t withdraw from a rising ball by Stuart Broad, and Lawrence – after 17 balls on nought – was bowled walking into the skiddy Dane Paterson. 

^{Steven Mullaney punished Essex with a century to extend the Notts lead}

If Essex do get anything from this match it will be down to Browne. He was head and shoulders ahead of his teammates in terms of application, accounting for more than half of their runs in the first innings, and then adding 60 not out in the second by the close. 

The watching scouts James Taylor and Marcus Trescothick will have been impressed by his courage: he certainly didn’t connect cleanly with everything – in fact, just as often the ball hit him – but he ground it out just like the archetypal left-handed opening batsman. Cook once said Browne was the man he would choose to bat for his life – and you can see why. You sense, however, that he will face the accusation that he lacks the range of strokes to prosper at Test level. 

Essex do play three of their next four games at home, and if Chelmsford turns for Harmer, or their batting unit starts to emulate Browne, you wouldn’t bet against them roaring into top-two contention. Perhaps if you have Harmer, you can afford to lose more games than most. 

But Essex will need to rouse themselves fast if they are to take anything from this one.

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