County Championship: Notts hit back after Pretorius fires Somerset

South African all-rounder Migael Pretorius added an unbeaten 95 to his four first-innings wickets to help Somerset carve out a 110-run first innings lead on day three at Trent Bridge.

However, with Nottinghamshire 177-1 in their second innings at the close, Craig Overton’s team have a lot to do if they are to take home a third County Championship Division One win of the season.

Pretorius hammered six sixes and eight fours in a 71-ball assault to ensure that the efforts of Tom Abell (111) and Tom Lammonby (87) on day two were not wasted.

Somerset had suffered a mid-innings stumble from 315-4 to 356-8 and were still in arrears until Pretorius and Jack Leach (37) put on 79 in rapid time, the 29-year-old Pretorius missing out on a second career hundred only because he ran out of partners.

Nottinghamshire fast bowler Dillon Pennington took 5-96, raising his tally for the season to 29 with his first five-wicket haul since moving from Worcester to Trent Bridge in the winter. Leg spinner Calvin Harrison’s reward for bowling 39 overs in the heat was figures of 3-173.

Yet the wicket of Haseeb Hameed, bowled by captain Overton for 91, is Somerset’s only second innings success so far from 58 overs of toil after the Nottinghamshire skipper had shared a 172-run opening partnership with Ben Slater, who finished unbeaten on 70 alongside nightwatchman Olly Stone.

Earlier, Abell added only six to his unbeaten 105 before he misread a ball from Harrison that trapped him leg before. His dismissal sparked a flurry of wickets, with Pennington getting four of them.

Report supplied by the ECB Reporters’ Network