Yorkshire stride towards title with Notts toppling

Yorkshire 407 Nottinghamshire 150

Ryan Sidebottom took four wickets against his former county (Getty)

Yorkshire can expect to leave Nottingham a large stride closer to fulfilling their ambition of a title to mark their 150th anniversary after demonstrating to the home side how they would like to have bowled.

After Ryan Sidebottom had taken four wickets against his former county and the under-rated Steve Patterson a career-best 5 for 43, the First Division leaders enforced the follow-on with a lead of 257 and every prospect of completing victory inside three days.

In doing so they would stretch their lead over Sussex to 33 points and look to Derbyshire to dampen Middlesex's chance of catching them by completing a second consecutive victory at Derby, where Steven Finn's reward for switching from The Oval to the east Midlands was to take one wicket for 50 runs and bag a pair with the bat.

Yorkshire could claim to have dominated every passage of play here at Trent Bridge but for their carelessness in letting Nottinghamshire off the hook somewhat in allowing their last two wickets to add 85, having had them teetering at 65 for 8.

At that point, the home side had been looking at a deficit of more than 300 after Sidebottom and Patterson had combined to blow away a top-order lacking James Taylor but still, in theory, one of the strongest in the First Division.

It was only when Liam Plunkett entered the attack that Nottinghamshire found any relief. The former Durham and England quick has been a revelation since moving to Headingley but today was not among his better days. Either side of a rain break, Plunkett bowled four overs for 46, teeing the ball up nicely for the swinging bat of Andre Adams and inviting Ajmal Shahzad to help himself likewise. Adams hit three sixes – one of them caught the wrong side of the boundary rope by Adil Rashid – in smiting 39 off 17 balls.

Yet Nottinghamshire were still dismissed for a season-low 150, having performed with little distinction with the ball themselves in the morning, when Jonny Bairstow put his England disappointment at the back of his mind by hitting 62 from 80 deliveries batting at eight.

Supported usefully by Patterson with the bat, Bairstow steered Yorkshire to a fourth batting point and was not far from snatching a fifth – a feat that cannot have been achieved many times by a side invited to bat first on this ground.

When Nottinghamshire batted a second time, Alex Hales was caught by Bairstow for the second time in a matter of four hours and Sidebottom moved within one wicket of equalling his father's career aggregate of 596 when he had Steven Mullaney leg before.