Outlaws ready for outground test

The Outlaws played a couple of matches at the picturesque outground in 2015 and re-start their Royal London One-Day Cup schedule with a match against Derbyshire Falcons on Sunday, 11am start.

When Notts went there last year it had been 11 years since they had last played a home match away from Trent Bridge and everyone concerned agreed that it had been too long.

Lisa Pursehouse, Nottinghamshire’s chief executive, says there were two principal reasons for taking last year’s matches to the north of the county.

“It worked really well for us last year because we’d decided to give Steve Birks, our head groundsman at Trent Bridge, a little extra time to prepare the Test match wicket but more importantly we felt it was right to take the cricket to another part of the county.”

Although Notts played a handful of matches at Cleethorpes up until 2004, they hadn’t played at an outground within the county borders since 1998, when they stopped using the Town Ground in Worksop.

“We’ve been really keen to develop an outground within the county,” said Miss Pursehouse. “And the relationship we’ve built up with Welbeck has just worked incredibly well. We’ve played a number of second eleven matches there and were well supported in our decision to play there last season, with over 3,500 people attending on the Saturday.”

Last season’s ‘Welbeck Weekender’ featured hugely contrasting weather variations. Notts made short shrift of beating Warwickshire in sunny conditions on the Saturday, aided by a brilliant century from Alex Hales. Rain brought a premature halt to Sunday’s fixture against Glamorgan.”

“I think cricket watchers generally make sure they’ve got all the right gear,” said Miss Pursehouse. “We might need a mixture of sun cream and blankets but hopefully it will be nice weather and will be ok.”