2013

2013 SEASON

• County championship – 7^th
• Yorkshire Bank 40 overs Competition – Winners
• Friends Life Twenty/20 Competition – losing quarter finalists
• Captain – Chris Read  T20 captain – David Hussey

The Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack described the performance by Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club as ‘One Day Good  – Four-day bad’.   This adequately sums up the county season.  Nottinghamshire seemed to be fighting off relegation in the County Championship all season, whilst performing well and indeed winning the Yorkshire Bank 40 Overs Competition. They were strongly tipped to win the T20 Cup only to lose to Essex by 47 runs at Trent Bridge in the quarter-finals. 

2013 was Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club’s 175^thanniversary at Trent Bridge, and a state of the art replay screen was erected at the corner of Radcliffe Road and Fox Road – at the time, this was reported to be the largest outdoor replay screen in Europe.

Nottinghamshire welcomed Ed Cowan, the Australian Test cricketer, who was to open the batting for the Club.  In his first innings of the season against Middlesex, he hit the first three balls that he received to the boundary. The next match saw Samit Patel achieve his highest individual score of 256 against Durham UCCU.  Wisden viewed it as ‘one of the most lop-sided matches in history’ with Nottinghamshire winning by 541 runs.  This was the highest first class victory ever achieved by Nottinghamshire. 

The winning of the Yorkshire Bank 40 over Final at Lord’s was the highlight of the year.  Playing against Glamorgan, Nottinghamshire totalled 244 for the loss of eight wickets.  Chris Read, the captain, was the only batsman to pass fifty. In reply, after being 108 runs for the loss of only two wickets, an excellent spell of bowling from Man of the Match Samit Patel, saw Glamorgan bowled out for 157 runs. 

Trent Bridge hosted a remarkable 1^stInvestec Ashes Test Match in 2013, which eventually saw England winning by 14 runs.  England only scored 215 runs in their first innings and with Australia surprisingly on 117 runs for nine wickets, it looked that England would take a commanding lead into the second innings. However an amazing last wicket stand between Ashton Agar, making his Test debut and Philip Hughes, saw 163 runs for the last wicket before the Nottinghamshire pair of Graeme Swann and Stuart Broad combined to dismiss Agar for 98 runs.  Australia led by 65 runs.  The end of the Australian second innings also nearly won the game for them. After Ian Bell had scored a century for England, Australia needed 310 runs to win.  Again they were 231 runs for nine wickets when the last wicket pair of Brad Haddin and James Pattinson added a further 65 runs before Haddin was dismissed by James Anderson.  Agar had batted up the order in view of his first innings exploits. 

The end of the season saw the retirement of David Hussey and the departure of Paul Johnson, the Notts batting coach, before the sudden retirement of Graeme Swann in December 2013 whilst on tour with England in Australia.

Reginald Thomas Simpson, the former Notts and England test cricketer passed away in November 2013 and many Notts members and cricketers attended his funeral.

Simpson played 27 times for England and was one of the five Cricketers of the Year in the 1950 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.  He played 495 first class matches with a highest score of 259 amongst the 31,000 runs that he amassed during his career.