Lehmann ploughs productive furrow to dent Notts ambition

Hampshire batter adds another hundred as bottom side make dogged response to 377

Hampshire 267 for 7 (Lehmann 115*, Sheat 3-61) trail Nottinghamshire 377 by 110 runs

In both Rothesay County Championship divisions, only Lancashire have scored fewer runs per wicket lost this year than Hampshire's average of just 24.50. Yet Jake Lehmann, their South Australian playing under a British passport, can boast the third-highest aggregate of runs (921) in the top tier.

Unsurprisingly, as their reply at Trent Bridge reached 267 for 7, 110 runs behind Nottinghamshire, it was Lehmann, initially rapid then circumspect as wickets fell in the afternoon, who top-scored. With sometimes novel footwork, reminiscent of his father Darren, the Australia allrounder, he posted a superb unbeaten 115.

Crucially he found a resolute partner in Scott Currie, a Dorset player as a teenager, who resisted 143 balls for 35 to revive his side from 165 for 6 in a seventh-wicket stand of 97 that has kept Hampshire in the game.

Currie, with a single century to his credit two years ago when on loan to Leicestershire, helped leave Nottinghamshire, now 16 points behind new leaders Warwickshire, still needing two wickets from ten overs on day three if they are to take maximum bonus points and then seek the win.

There was something of a false dawn for them in the morning when Olly Stone removed Felix Organ, caught behind from a defensive edge, with the first ball of the day. Straight and fast, it whipped out the opener for 6. In fact it then took 80 minutes for the seamers to hit a consistently taxing line and they were in danger of wasting a ball only four overs old at the start.

The reply, from 12 for 1, moved untroubled through 18 overs until, in four balls, both Toby Albert for 31 and Nick Gubbins for 35 played round full balls and went lbw. The breakthrough came from fourth-seamer Tom Giles's second over in this only his second game.

Dillon Pennington found essentially the same delivery from round the wicket for left-handed Gubbins and suddenly neither new batter had even faced. But Lehmann, jumping about the crease like a man on hot coals, attacked with zeal and was 33 from 29 balls by lunch, at 114 for 3.

Hampshire had reached 141 before decline set in. A poor misjudgment from Joe Weatherley saw him play no shot and prove a third consecutive lbw for 25 when Stone returned to the attack and, with Liam Patterson-White's left-arm spin introduced at the Stuart Broad End, only 50 runs came from the 30 overs to tea.

From 15 of them, the spinner conceded only as many runs whilst, at the other end, Ben Brown, playing with a captain's self-denial, suddenly undid his hard work with a rash cut hard to first slip. The team-mates from the same Canterbury side in New Zealand then combined as wicket-keeper Mitchell Hay accepted the catch from a top-edged hook that brought Fraser Sheat his second success in ten balls when 18-year-old Ben Mayes departed for 1.

Thereafter the game changed. Either side of tea, taken on 190 for 6, Lehmann's support from Currie lasted through 38 overs. Patterson-White's spell of only 28 runs from 21 wicketless overs had maintained unfailing pressure but when he stood down for the second new ball at 216, no breakthrough was forthcoming until 31 balls remained.

A beauty from Sheat finally breached Currie's defences to rattle the stumps after Lehmann's hundred had earlier come from 160 balls a few overs before. His best in this country of 116, when briefly playing for his father's old county Yorkshire in 2016, was one run from being equalled by the close. For champions Nottinghamshire it has been a frustrating time since their last win, against Surrey 18 days ago.