Paul Franks emphasised the importance of young cricketers learning how to win after Nottinghamshire opened their Second XI Championship campaign with victory over Lancashire.

Following an opening day washout, Toby Pettman (7-105) and Calvin Harrison (8-96) performed starring roles with the ball to dismiss the Red Rose County for 213 and 196 across the three remaining days.

Franks admitted that his side’s first innings total of 249 left them with much work to do on the final day, but praised the batting unit for responding under pressure chasing 161 on day four.

“The lads have had a stop-start, weather affected beginning to the season during which a lot of them haven’t played the cricket they would have liked, so to get another day washed out at the beginning of this game was frustrating,” said the Assistant Head Coach.

“They handled it really well, there have been a lot of very encouraging performances and it was great to put a win on the board.

“I was always quite confident that we could find time for a result across the three days, and we accelerated the game by bowling so well in the first innings.

“Winning makes players happy and that’s always good to see. We worked hard to get that result and we’ll go to Taunton next week aiming to continue moving our performances forward from here.

“Calvin and Toby were real standouts with the ball, taking 15 wickets between them,” Franks added.

“We’d have liked to have kicked on and scored over 300 in our first innings, which would have made for an easier run-chase on a pitch that was deteriorating.

“But the challenge was to take the opportunity, in a pressure situation and win the game for the team, and we played with a lot of maturity to achieve that.

“Sol Budinger got the run-chase off to a flying start and Matt Montgomery, Dane Schadendorf and Calvin all played in a nice and controlled fashion to see us home.”

As well as progression in players’ individual performances with bat and ball, Franks is looking for a winning mentality to be instilled within the Notts Second XI during the course of the coming weeks.

“I believe you can marry individual progress with the challenge of winning games as a team,” he said.

“We have a group of young players who are aspirational, and finding match-winning performances from within the group is what we’re all about.

“We have a block of red-ball cricket coming up and that’s going to provide lots of opportunities for different individuals to put their hands up and win games.

“We want players to be taking large wicket hauls, scoring big volumes of runs and contributing, but it’s also about learning how to win, as that’s what’s expected at first team level.

“We concentrate on what we do and how we do it and that leads to winning opportunities. We were good enough to take one of those this week and I’m delighted for the lads.”

A full scorecard, together with highlight clips, is available here…

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