Persistent rain frustrated Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire at Trent Bridge, wrecking what was shaping up as a good contest after Joe Clarke’s 79 off 41 balls helped the home side to 175/5 before the bad weather that had already led three Vitality Blast matches to be abandoned without a ball bowled arrived in Nottingham.

The Nottinghamshire captain hit four sixes and 10 fours as he went past fifty, backed up by 39 off 21 balls by England’s Ben Duckett in his first Blast appearance in 2024, an unbeaten 26 off 15 balls from Liam Patterson-White. 

Lewis Goldsworthy, the left-arm spinner on loan from Somerset, was the pick of the Foxes bowlers, taking 3-36 from four overs.

With three overs of their innings remaining when the umpires took the players off the field, Nottinghamshire were poised to post a 200-plus total against a depleted Leicestershire attack.

The home crowd were hoping to get a first look at the Afghanistan left-arm seamer Fazalhaq Farooqi, the leading wicket-taker in the recent T20 World Cup after his nation’s historic run to the semi-finals, who has joined the Outlaws for the second half of their Blast programme.

Umpires Neil Mallender and Naseem Ashraf waited as long as they could before making a decision, mindful that a Foxes innings as short as five overs would constitute a match under competition rules. A brief break in the rain gave rise to hopes of an 8.45pm restart and a revised Duckworth Lewis Stern target for Leicestershire of 181 from 16 overs, but those hopes were quickly dashed.