LV= County Championship: Division Two winners (promoted)
Royal London Cup 50-over: Quarter-final
T20 Vitality Blast: Quarter-final
Captain: County Championship – Steven Mullaney
Royal London Cup – Haseeb Hameed
T20 Vitality Blast – Dan Christian/Steven Mullaney
Promotion to Division One of the County Championship was the primary aim of the 2022 season and was achieved, along with the Division Two Title, in a record-breaking win over Durham in late September.
Four players made centuries in Notts’ first innings for the first time since 1928. Two of those – Lyndon James and Matthew Montgomery – made their highest First-Class scores. That total of 662-5 was the seventh best for the County and the victory margin of 465 the biggest yet recorded.
Montgomery’s maiden First-Class hundred was a big one, 178, bettered only by a few Notts batters (Guy Welton and Ted Alletson among them). It came as he secured a first team slot in the top order for the run-in to the season, making 80 on debut v Glamorgan. His debut was all the more memorable as it delivered him the Notts squad number of 666!
At the end of the campaign, it was announced that Matthew had signed a three-year deal to keep him at Trent Bridge until the end of the 2025 season.
When the ECB decided to revert to pre-pandemic divisions, Notts were put back into Division Two based on their relegation in 2019, rather than contemporary form. In the two seasons of the re-structured Championship, they had been one of the most successful counties and in 2021 only the fact that they had lost twice to Warwickshire denied them the title. So it felt right that they won a place back in Division One at the first time of asking. 
Ben Duckett was named overall Player of the Year for his record across the LV= County Championship and the T20 Vitality Blast, scoring 1,408 runs across First-Class and T20 cricket and finishing as the Green and Golds’ top scorer in the shortest format.
His 241 against Derbyshire in the Championship was the highest score for Notts since Samit Patel’s 247 against Leicestershire in 2017.
Duckett’s consistency saw him called up to England Lions’ squad for 50 over and four-day fixtures against South Africa and, latterly, selected in England’s touring party to Pakistan for their IT20 and Test Series.
He played in all seven of the IT20 series, making one half century (70) in a series of impressive knocks. Notts team-mate Alex Hales was also recalled to the England T20 squad after a number of years when he was not considered for selection.
Liam Patterson-White, named Uncapped Player of the Year for Notts, was selected for the England Lions in a four-day fixture against South Africa off the back of his red-ball performances.
Duckett and Haseeb Hameed each made more than 1000 First-Class runs, Hameed topping the charts with 1235; six different players scored a ton, two of those – Duckett and Ben Slater – making double hundreds.
Dane Paterson passed 50 wickets for the second season in a row, finishing with 56 victims at 22.35, which earned him the County Championship Player of the Year award. Patterson-White was the next most successful bowler, his 41First-Class wickets being the most for any England qualified spinner.
If the red-ball form was so impressive, the white-ball game – in recent seasons the club’s stronger format – was ultimately disappointing.
The Outlaws reached the quarter-finals of both the Vitality Blast and the Royal London Cup but stumbled at that stage; it was particularly frustrating in the 50-over tournament given that Trent Bridge was, for the second season, the host ground for the Royal London Cup final. Kent Spitfires won their first limited overs title since 1978, beating Lancashire by 21runs.
In addition to staging that final, Trent Bridge hosted the first Test against New Zealand which ended with one of the most spectacular finishes seen in the 65 Tests the ground has thus far staged. A run chase led by a remarkable 52-ball hundred by Jonny Bairstow, saw England win the match and set up a summer in which the home team chased potentially difficult targets with comparative ease.
England also won the T20 International versus India at Trent Bridge by 17 runs, despite Suryakumar Yadav’s 117 off just 55 balls.
Trent Bridge also played host to the Trent Rockets in the second year of The Hundred; the Rockets won the men’s title.
With The Hundred occupying their home ground, The Outlaws took their 2022 Royal London Cup campaign to out grounds, playing Middlesex and Durham at Grantham and Surrey at Welbeck. For the second year, the competition was designated as a ‘development’ tournament with opportunities for young and emerging players. The Outlaws gave List-A debuts to James Hayes, Toby Pettman and Ben Martindale, son of former Notts player Duncan Martindale.
Two of Trent Bridge’s Australian stars said goodbye to the club and ground in this season. James Pattinson cut short his return to Nottinghamshire to go back to his family in Australia and T20 skipper Dan Christian called time on his stay with The Outlaws, leaving an outstanding record as a match winner and leader – with two cup triumphs to his credit.
Zak Chappell, Joey Evison and Sol Budinger all opted for county moves towards the end of the season. The major new signing was England and Warwickshire fast bowler Olly Stone, who joined Nottinghamshire in the summer as he began his return to fitness following an injury lay-off.
In October 2022 the death was announced of Dave Pullan, former Notts wicket keeper who also served as General Manager at Trent Bridge. He was a popular figure and will be greatly missed by family, friends and everyone at Trent Bridge, where Dave was a regular attendee at the Former Players’ Days.
As the season ended, the ECB High Performance Review was published with far-reaching proposals that included a reduction of County Championship matches from 14 to 10. The review was hotly debated and subject to ratification by the county chairmen.
If fully implemented, it had the potential to deny Nottinghamshire their place in the top division, an unlikely and unpopular scenario.
October 2022