Wessels and Bird cement Nottinghamshire dominance

Durham 193 for 4 (Northwick 59*, Bird 4-59) trail Nottinghamshire 534 (Wessels 159*, Taylor 114, Patel 84, Hutton 74, Borthwick 5-79) by 341 runsScorecard

Nottinghamshire’s season is in danger of following last season’s perilous trajectory, three defeats in their opening six Championship matches again leaving them with catching up to do. With Chris Read out of the picture until some time in July with a broken hand and thus unable to organise the lower middle-order rescue act that has become his speciality, you fancy the challenge this time might be greater still.

A tough fixture against a resurgent Durham, chasing a third consecutive win, did not look the ideal moment to be relying on batsmen in unreliable form yet two of them have delivered abundant runs here, as a result of which Paul Collingwood’s team is the one needing to fight back.

Brendan Taylor, whose 71 in the defeat at the Ageas Bowl last week was his first innings of substance this season, followed up with his first century for almost a year on Saturday and, after an opening passage not without difficulties, Riki Wessels matched him and more, building on similar portents of returning form against Hampshire by making an unbeaten 159, his highest score since he fell one short of a double hundred against Sussex at Hove in May 2012.

Backed up by a career-best 74 from Brett Hutton in a partnership that added 197 for the seventh wicket, Wessels enabled Nottinghamshire to build further on the recovery from 27 for 3 engineered by Taylor and Samit Patel on the opening day to reach a total that ought to be enough, at the very least, to ensure a fourth defeat is avoided.

Watchful at first, perhaps even a little …

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