Smith and Hameed restore balance with century-stand against Notts

Tom Smith (66*) and Haseeb Hameed (58*) both hit unbeaten half-centuries in Lancashire's second innings to help the visitors recover after enduring a strong effort with the bat from Nottinghamshire on Day Three at Trent Bridge.

The hosts posted a mammoth total of 474 in their first innings, with their top nine batsmen all scoring 30 or more runs, handing Notts a healthy lead of 198 runs after Lancashire were bowled out for 276. But a defiant and unbroken partnership worth 128 runs between Smith and Hameed helped reduce the deficit to 70 runs, with all ten second-innings wickets intact heading into the final day.

Nottinghamshire claimed maximum batting points after Samit Patel (67) and Riki Wessels (62) added 105 runs for the sixth wicket, before lower-order runs from Stuart Broad and Brett Hutton - who both made 46 - strengthened their total into a potentially match-winning situation, were it not for the fact that Lancashire's openers stood firm for 49 overs to reach stumps unscathed.

Resuming the third day with their partnership already worth 62 runs, Patel and Wessels rubbed salt into Lancashire's wounds by surviving testing spells from Kyle Jarvis (2-108) and Neil Wagner to bat the first hour without offering the visitors a passage back into the game. Wessels secured his half-century inside the first hour of the day, adding to his overnight score of 25 to reach fifty in 107 balls with eight boundaries.

The hundred-partnership followed in 196 balls and at this stage in the day, it was difficult to see where a breakthrough was coming from, but Smith (2-70) - who would later make his second fifty of the match - extracted two wickets in the space of four overs to see the back of both Patel and Wessels in quick succession. First, the Lancashire all-rounder had Patel caught behind by Steven Croft for 67, before a rising delivery took the edge of Wessels' bat, forcing Liam Livingstone to hold on at first slip with the score at 369/7.

Broad's renowned capabilities with the bat in the lower order suggested that he would not settle for the four batting points already achieved by the Nottinghamshire batsmen who had come before him and his purposeful innings of 46 from 60 balls proved vital in helping the home side reach 400 with a ball to spare. By the time Notts had secured a fifth batting point, Broad had hit 33 from 30 deliveries, with his seven boundaries causing Lancashire's heads to drop even further at the sight of yet more batsmen going on to make telling contributions to the scorecard.

An upbeat home crowd welcomed Broad and Hutton back to the pavilion with the score at 416/7 and the lead at 140 runs by the time lunch arrived and Lancashire continued to find life hard on an increasingly friendly batting wicket. Hutton lived an initially charmed life, twice edging Jarvis through the gap in the slip cordon in the same over, but he became the ninth Nottinghamshire batsman to reach 30 when he and Broad added fifty runs in only 58 balls for the eighth wicket.

Matthew Parkinson's (1-68) introduction after the interval reaped immediate success for the Red Rose, as the leg-break bowler had Broad bowled four runs shy of a half-century at 448/8 with his first ball of a new spell. Imran Tahir (7) followed shortly afterwards when he fended a Wagner bouncer to Livingstone, who took a diving catch to account for the first and only single-figure score of the Notts innings.

Hutton followed Broad by falling four runs shy of his fifty when he was comprehensively bowled by Wagner, who removed two stumps from the ground to finish with figures of 3-107, possibly his final act with the ball for Lancashire given the state of the game. The home side would have hoped that Lancashire's spirited comeback with the ball signalled success of their own, but Lancashire ensured that their hosts endured a wicketless session and a half before the close.

Smith, who top-scored with 70 in Lancashire's first innings, supported teenager Hameed with an unbroken partnership for the first wicket worth 128 runs, cutting Nottinghamshire's sizeable first-innings lead from 198 to 70 runs. The openers achieved a fifty-partnership on the stroke of tea in 89 deliveries, before batting for the entire final session to restore Lancashire's position in the game into a much more pleasing one.

Hameed progressed to his fifth half-century of the season in 112 balls with seven boundaries, while the hundred-partnership effectively cut the 198-run lead in half when Lancashire reached 101/0 inside the 38th over. Smith concluded the third day by reaching back-to-back fifties in the game, his second fifty coming in 120 balls with six fours, as Lancashire reached stumps revitalised by the application demonstrated by the opening partnership between their former captain and teenage prodigy.