Cricket: Jones rides his luck

Derbyshire 310-8 v Notts

Dean Jones's 10th hundred in all cricket this season for Derbyshire was not his best innings - he was dropped three times - but it could turn out to be his most valuable as his adopted county try to win their first Championship title for 60 years. Dominic Cork also made an important and exciting contribution at the end of the day.

Jones won the toss on what he must have thought was a hard pitch full of runs. As it happened, the ball moved all over the place and in no time at all Derbyshire were struggling to salvage something from the innings. But Nottinghamshire wasted their chance by poor catching and bad bowling after tea.

Although the last few days at the Racecourse Ground had been fine enough, there was a lot of rain before that. The surface appeared to be hard but the hardness was effectively a crust, and the seam bowlers were able to make the ball grip on pitching.

Adrian Rollins and Chris Adams soon went, caught behind pushing forward and lbw playing no stroke, respectively, and at first Jones and Kim Barnett found it distinctly puzzling. In between a few good strokes there was any amount of playing and missing. When Jones was on 10 he played forward to Mark Bowen and was badly dropped at second slip.

Barnett added 52 with Jones before he pushed forward to Bowen and was bowled by one which cut back. Tim O'Gorman made a good partner for Jones and they added 63 without making batting look easy.

In the first part of the afternoon, O'Gorman edged Chris Cairns on to his stumps and Matthew Vandrau was bowled playing no stroke at Keith Evans. Meanwhile, Jones played the odd drive and square cut as only he can. A leg glance off Chris Tolley brought him to his 50 but then he survived a caught-and-bowled chance to Andy Afford.

Nottinghamshire had bowled well but now they found they could not contain Jones, who came down the pitch and straight drove Afford for a huge six, and, with Karl Krikken as his partner, the bat was on top for the first time.

After being dropped a third time, at cover off Cairns, Jones reached his hundred in 74 overs and was then lbw trying to play Bowen to leg. By then, Cork had settled in and with Kevin Dean for company he drove and pulled with great power and considerable exuberance. Cork has taken Derbyshire to a total which could turn out to be pretty useful and also batted well enough to show that he should score more runs than he does.