Mick Newell reflected on a very useful couple of days after Nottinghamshire found some form with the bat against the Combined Campuses and Colleges.

The tourists scored 297-7 on Day 2 with Samit Patel scoring a century. The home side reached 137-4 from their 30 overs in response.

“It’s been a good day for Samit, for Riki Wessels, the captain and Brett Hutton and Luke Wood, so quite a lot of people have had time in the middle which has been very beneficial,” he said.

“Their lads have then come out and played a few shots after tea so it’s been quite an entertaining day’s cricket.

“These matches aren’t important in terms of the results. What’s important is that people push their claim to be in the team.

“There are certain players who know they are going to be in the team when we go to Lord’s on the 12th of April and there are a number of players who want to be in the team.

“Amongst the guys who need to push their case forward, one or two have done in this game and one or two haven’t.

“So when we play Hampshire in the middle of next week there’ll be people eager to spend a little more time in the middle than they did in this match.”

Newell felt the facilities and opposition were ideal in this match in terms of preparation for the new season.

“The wicket has been excellent, it’s done a little bit,” he said.

“We don’t want to play on flat wickets because we’re not going to play on flat wickets when we get home, so it’s been a very useful two days. It’s been very entertaining and thoroughly useful.

 “We’ve seen a couple of good cricketers in this match. Obviously Fidel Edwards was a Test match bowler in the recent past and he bowled very quickly and very well yesterday.

“And the young fellow who got 150 from the Windward Islands (Kavem Hodge) looks an excellent player, so it’s been good to play somebody different.

“And it’s been good to play a team that have been as committed and willing to try as hard as these lads have over the last two days.”

Read the full day two report here

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