Notts Outlaws v Yorkshire Carnegie

Tonight saw Baz and my good self head down Nottingham to watch the Notts outlaws take on the Yorkshire Carnegie in the twenty20 cup at Trent Bridge. The weather here has been pretty dreadful over the past week and with it pissing it down for most of the morning i was a tad concerned that we wouldn't get the full allocation of overs in but thankfully we got a full evenings play. I haven't seen much of Baz since last season finished so it was good to catch up and discuss the plan of attack for Lincoln's pre season and next season. Just going back to last season for a moment Baz told me that the long arm of the law had unfortunately caught the Bazmobile speeding on the way back from watching Retford United's game at Bridlington. The old boy had been caught on camera and now had to attend a drivers awareness course in the near future. Maybe he should have taken some first class advice from our good friend Shaggy.

Amongst other things, we discussed the Imps first two away matches at Cambridge United and Newport County. Without going into too much detail on the trip for Cambridge it looks like Baz will be getting a round of teas in for the lads at Hucknall Town. I will say no more.
Tickets for tonight's game were available at £17 on the gate for £13 if you booked in advance (which is what we did)  Although if you pre booked don't be fooled into thinking that you pick them up from the ticket office. No you have to take a stroll to the collection point window, the very one that we had walked past to go to the ticket office.(Like a pair of muppets) From there we took on wander to find some pre match food and paid a visit to the Trent Bridge spice kebab shop. I went for the lamb donner and chicken shish combo with Baz going the whole hog and ordering the house special.

One of the appeals of watching cricket live is the vastly different ways fans get treated in contrast to going to a football match. At the cricket you get "Ground admission" which allows you to sit in any stand in the ground that you want, apart from the members enclosure and upper tier of the Radcliffe road stand which was shut for tonight's game. Thus meaning you can wander around the ground to your hearts content. You are also allowed to bring you own food into the ground, another action that is frowned upon in footballing circles. If you don't bring your own in then there is a good range of food on offer that actually looks quite nice unlike the grotty overpriced  crap you tend to get at most football league and former football league grounds.

Tonight's game was set up quite nicely. Yorkshire sat top of the Northern group but if Notts won then they would go top of the group with two matches to play. A win for the visitors would put them into the last eight so there was plenty to play for. As we ate our kebab we were "entertained" by Nuts the Squirrel and a dance act that i had never heard of, and in all probability will never hear of again. Notts had won the toss and elected to bat. The plan being to get a decent score on the board and let Yorkshire chase the total under the lights. A good plan in theory, but then the game started.
The first ball of the Notts innings was edged by Riki Wessels and that really set the tone for the rest of the Nottinghamshire innings. Just as soon as a batsman started to look settled they did a daft shot and gave their wicket away. The one exception was Adam Voges who hit a splendid 70. By the end of the innings Notts had posted a score of 148-6 which was about 30 runs shy of the kind of total then they would have wanted before the start of play. Credit must go to Yorkshire for the way they bowled and contained the Notts batsmen throughout the innings and forced them into mistakes.

At the innings change i took the opportunity to check out the club shop. Half of it was selling Notts CCC stuff and half of it was selling England stuff. Earlier on in the season Trent Bridge hosted a test match between England and the West Indies. With this in mind Notts had ordered a few boxes of West Indies caps which it would appear they are struggling to shift given that they are now down to £10 and have plenty of stock available. I managed to bag myself a Notts CCC cap and a cute cuddly Nuts the squirrel  mascot.

Yorkshire got off to a blistering start with 14 coming from the first over alone. Notts did have a sniff about halfway through the innings when they managed to bag a couple of wickets and slow down the Yorkshire batting, but in the end Yorkshire won by 6 wickets with 14 balls to spare, and were helped by some Notts misfields along the way. This was Notts' first defeat in the competition this season and with the following days game away at Derbyshire being rained off it means that they have qualified for the quarter finals. Should they beat Leicestershire at home on Sunday then they will get a home tie in the last eight. However being at home isn't the be all and end all as last season they breezed through the group stage, topped it, got a home tie, and promptly went on to lose the bugger.
I can thoroughly recommend taking in a match at Trent Bridge if you get the chance. The stadium is great and you normally get to see and international player or two on show.
One final point is that we got very lucky with the weather; given how much rain we had it was a pleasant surprise that we got the full 40 overs in. It was just a shame that Notts didn't make the most of them.