Bess bosses Notts as Somerset dare to dream

Somerset 365 (Ball 6-57) and 105 for 2 lead Nottinghamshire 138 (Bess 5-43) by 332 runsScorecard

If you hope to make history, it is probably helpful not to be encumbered by the past.

Dom Bess is too young to recall the years when Somerset nearly won things. That pain is for old cricketers. Fresh-faced and engaging, the offspinner only left Blundell’s School last year and does not even have a professional contract as yet. All he has is the present and it is glorious. For Bess is 19-years-old and he may be in the first Somerset team to win the County Championship

Bowling with a high action and getting plenty of bounce albeit not much turn from this Taunton pitch, Bess took 5 for 43 as Chris Rogers’ team dismissed Nottinghamshire for 138. That gave them a first-innings lead of 227 runs, which they had extended to 332 by the close. It would now be a major surprise if they do not complete their sixth four-day win of the season and thereby earn the 23 points that would throw down a challenge to Middlesex and Yorkshire at Lord’s.

For if Somerset win this game, they will, indeed, be the County Champions if Middlesex do not beat Yorkshire or if Yorkshire do not beat Middlesex and score 350 runs in their first innings. The prose of the issue may be strangled by conditionals and connectives but for Somerset votaries the poetry has often come first. This could be a wonderful autumn in the West Country.

On this second evening, though, home supporters can look back with fondness on a day when the ball had only to hit the pad for all Somerset to appeal for justice. As Bess and Jack Leach probed Nottinghamshire’s batsmen like tyro barristers, they were joined in their merciless inquisition by most of the spectators in the …

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