Alex Hales’ and Phil Jaques’ huge chase steers Nottinghamshire to top of table

Middlesex 505 & 271-9 dec Nottinghamshire 392 & 387-4 (Notts win by 6 wkts)

Alex Hales was out in the 90s for the second time in the match but set his side up for a fine win (Getty Images)

Nottinghamshire elevated themselves at least temporarily to the top of the First Division table with the most unlikely of victories, conceding more than 500 runs in the first innings and another 271 in the second but ultimately winning by a margin that the record books will say was comfortable, only four wickets down and with more than 11 overs to spare.

They did so here by achieving their third-largest fourth-innings total to win a match, having been set 385 to win from a minimum of 86 overs when Chris Rogers, the Middlesex captain, who had scored 180 of the first-innings runs that put his side in such a strong position, declared at 271 for 9.

No one has scored more in the fourth innings to win a county match at Trent Bridge than Middlesex themselves, when they reached 502 for 6 in 1925 on the back of a double hundred from Patsy Hendren. Nottinghamshire’s record is 461 for 3, when they beat Worcestershire at New Road in 2001.

Those facts reflect how infrequently such high-value run chases come off, but on an unforgiving wicket, one which allowed little margin for error and offered little in the way of help to any of the bowlers, Nottinghamshire got off to a flying start and never looked back.

Phil Jaques and Alex Hales were not parted at the top of the order until they had put on 156 in 30.3 overs, when Jaques swept Ravi Patel and was caught at deep midwicket. From there it was Nottinghamshire’s match to lose and Middlesex did not bowl well enough to look like stopping them at any point.

Hales was out in the 90s for the second time in the match, but apart from a couple of fortunate moments, when Middlesex’s catching let them down, again played well, appearing to have mastered the technical problems that beset him last season.

Michael Lumb passed 50 for the first time this season and though he and Samit Patel were out in quick succession, the latter squandering his opportunity with a loose drive to short extra cover, James Taylor and Riki Wessels negotiated this mini-crisis, taking their time at first before Wessels in particular went back on the front foot.

His unbeaten 74 came off just 48 balls and included five sixes, the last of them pulled over midwicket off Eoin Morgan, to win the game.

“It is up there with any win we’ve had since I’ve been coach,” Mick Newell, Nottinghamshire’s director of cricket said afterwards.

Rogers, who had seen his side score 472 to beat Yorkshire at Lord’s earlier in the season, insisted the declaration was the right one in the circumstances. “Credit to Notts but we simply didn’t bowl well enough,” he said.