Rogers ensures Somerset do all they can, now must watch and wait

Somerset 365 (Hildreth 135, Rogers 132, Ball 6-57) and 313 for 5 dec (Rogers 100*, Davies 59, Trego 55, Patel 3-95) beat Nottinghamshire 138 (Bess 5-43, Leach 3-42) and 215 (Root 66*, Leach 4-69, Van der Merwe 3-59) by 325 runsScorecard

It is a hard world in which you do almost all that is asked of you only to find it is not quite enough. That, though, may be Somerset’s fate at some stage on Friday afternoon.

Chris Rogers and his players prepared for this game knowing that all they could do was beat Nottinghamshire and hope things went their way at Lord’s. That first task was completed at just before five o’clock when Imran Tahir skied Jack Leach ten yards behind the bowler and Peter Trego ran in to take the catch and complete the home side’s facile 325-run win.

The margin of victory did no justice to Somerset’s superiority. They had won with a day and an hour to spare. For the first time this season they were top of the table. And yet their leadership may not last 24 hours.

For the one point Somerset did not take from this game may determine their final fate. Their collapse late on the first day and their subsequent failure to collect five batting points meant if Yorkshire scored 350 runs inside 110 overs of their first innings and defeated Middlesex, Andrew Gale’s team would be champions. A Middlesex win was always going to take the title to Lord’s.

So when the admirable Ryan Sidebottom clipped that boundary off Toby Roland-Jones the news spread rather quickly among Somerset’s supporters as they strolled on the County Ground’s outfield during the tea interval on what became the final afternoon of the season.

And when Sidebottom and Jack Brooks took early wickets in Middlesex’s second innings their gloom deepened still more. As far as Somerset are concerned, of course, Sidebottom has form. It was he whose tough tail-end batting partly accounted for their being denied the Championship in 2010.

Now, here he was again, admirable, accomplished and annoying. Exactly the opposite of most of Nottinghamshire’s cricketers in this game.

It is, of course, not quite settled yet. Somerset’s players and supporters will gather at the County Ground on the final day of the season, taking comfort from togetherness and praying beyond all cricketing logic that Yorkshire intransigence …

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