In the second of our Season Reviews, Nottinghamshire scorer Roger 'The Duke' Marshall goes through his numbers to pick out moments of note through his side's rollercoaster summer:
I’d like to start my reflection not with a highlight, but on a sad note. I’d like to pass my condolences on to the family of Lancashire scorer Alan West, who died following a long battle with illness. He’s been an ever-present at Old Trafford in my time of scoring, and he’ll be sorely missed.
I’ve spent this summer travelling up and down the country following Notts, and seen nearly every ball from the scorers’ room. When you’re as involved as this for so long, it’s easy to forget highlights, but this summer we’ve seen some amazing cricket.
Luke Fletcher hitting the winning run against Warwickshire to send Notts to the knockout stages of the Royal London One-Day Cup is the first which springs to mind, it was astonishing, That came after the tie here against Somerset which looked for so long as if we were going to lose, to have turned it around like that showed how good we can be.
Luke Fletcher and Harry Gurney leave the field victorious
And how can we forget setting the record for Nottinghamshire’s highest ever List A score against Middlesex at Lord’s? Those two blistering centuries, first by Alex Hales then the dramatic six into the third tier of the stand off the last ball for James Taylor to ton up, that was quite the day.
In many ways this season was a bit of a disappointment, we’d been hoping that we would go well in the Twenty20 but we were well beaten in the quarter-final, and there was certainly an extra impetus in defending the 50-over title.
We didn’t get off to a brilliant start in either of those competitions but there was that period where we were unbeaten for nearly 20 games. That was a lot of fun.
I can’t remember one shot standing out above the others, you’re often too busy recording them in the book or on the computer to really appreciate them.
Riki Wessels’ innings against Middlesex was magnificent though. People thought they were under attack in the Fox Road Stand… there was plenty of red ink flowing in the book that day!
Alex Hales’ second innings at Hove against Sussex was an excellent one too, he really found his form and it was lovely to watch.
I’m most disappointed for Andy Carter, who looked really good before his injury ended his season earlier, that was such a shame. He took a four-fer in one of the early games and really looked good. If he’d have been available all summer and we hadn’t lost Peter Siddle early this season could have been very different.
Andy Carter: Sorely missed when Notts needed him most
It left a heavy burden for Harry Gurney and Luke Fletcher. They bowled 94 overs in the first eight Championship matches, then over 200 in the remaining eight. It’s no wonder they faded a little toward the end of the season.
I was always amazed by James Franklin’s ability to catch anything. There was one shot dropping under the replay screen at Trent Bridge in one of the later matches, and I don’t know for the life of me how he got to it. It seemed a good 30 yards away, he never lengthened his stride or hurried, and somehow he got there.
James Franklin made fielding look easy
The best opposition team has to be Yorkshire of course. We played well against them at Headingley and they proved they were worthy champions here at Trent Bridge.
Warwickshire competed well in all three formats, we just cant beat them, and Sussex always have certain players who do very well against us. Ed Joyce and Chris Nash always score runs, as do Mark Stoneman, Phil Mustard and Ben Stokes at Durham.
Here’s to 2015 then, and my annual trip to the newsagents for a collection of coloured biros.