For Nottinghamshire and Hampshire, the season ended two minutes before the lunch interval on the final scheduled day. High pressure creeping up from the south brought welcome warmth and the sun shone on the few supporters scattered round the ground. Michael Carberry had made sure that the meal could be a hearty one by pressing the accelerator to the floor and taking 23 from nine deliveries bowled by Samit Patel, an emphatic reminder both of the batsman’s ability to change gear and of what could await England from Pakistan’s batsmen in the UAE shortly.
It was quite a recovery for Hampshire, who would have spent the afternoon monitoring the events at Headingley where Sussex’s defeat by Yorkshire meant they were relegated to the second division along with Worcestershire.
It will also have sent the Middlesex players, chastened by their ignominious defeat to Worcestershire the previous day, for the champagne: for them, Nottinghamshire’s defeat made the difference between the £88,000 the Middle Saxons would have received for third place and £169,000 they will now be able to cash.
Several times during the previous three days, Hampshire looked out of it. At 203 for eight in the first innings they still had a deficit of 137 to overcome, but Gareth Berg and Ryan McLaren added 123 for the ninth wicket to get them within 14 runs. Then, with the Nottinghamshire second innings having reached 127 for two, Berg, McLaren and Fidel Edwards took the last eight wickets for 58 runs, and the last five for 14.
Carberry finished his summer unbeaten on 84 from 157 balls, an innings of diligence at first and freedom later on. Chasing 200 to win, things were set up by an opening stand of 129 between Carberry and Jimmy Adams. The pitch was sluggish, the sort of surface that demanded, as Nottinghamshire did later on, an array of fielders placed in short positions in front of the bat for the ball that stuck in the surface a little, rather than a coterie of slips as we saw in the Test match this summer.
Both batsmen were watchful, until Adams, forgetting fleetingly that slow pitches are not conducive to cutting, chopped a delivery from Jake Ball on to his stumps and departed for 70. Next ball, James Vince played completely down the wrong line and found middle and off stumps lying flat on the deck.
It was Nottinghamshire’s only success. Smith played energetically and when Patel came on, Carberry simply used his feet to dance down the pitch and hit him straight for six and then three times through the covers before taking the quick single to win the game.
