Ollie Stevenson
There is a version of a summer’s Friday evening in Nottingham that most students never really find. It starts at half two, ends around half nine, takes in two games of T20 cricket at Trent Bridge, and costs a tenner.
Notts’ T20 summer starts May 22 with six home double-headers running through to July 10. Four are evening fixtures and two fall on Sunday afternoons. The 2024 Charlotte Edwards Cup champions The Blaze get things going at 14:30, with the Outlaws following at 18:30.
If you can make the whole thing, it is a full afternoon and evening of cricket for less than the price of a night out. If you can only make the second game, the men’s action begins at half six and you are back home by ten.
There is a cricketing substance behind it too. The squad Peter Moores has put together looks more ambitious than anything the Outlaws have assembled in recent years. George Linde arrives for the full campaign, giving Notts a left-arm spinning all-rounder, with proven Blast experience. He has taken 26 wickets in 27 Blast appearances for Kent, and spent much of late last summer at Trent Bridge with the Trent Rockets, helping them reach the Hundred final. George Munsey joins him, bringing more than 150 international caps and a staggering career strike rate north of 141.
The players already here are worth watching in their own right. Tom Moores, the longest-serving member of the Outlaws, comes into the summer after a brilliant 2025 campaign. He was named the Outlaw’s Blast player of the season after hitting 459 runs at a strike rate north of 157, and now just needs 44 more to become only the fourth Notts player to reach 2,500 runs for the club. Joe Clarke captains a squad that looks deeper and more dangerous than it has for a while.
The format has changed too. The ECB has moved away from the old two groups of nine and replaced them with three groups of six, giving the group stage less room for error. With fewer fixtures and a smaller table, bad weeks should matter more. There is less chance to coast through the early games and rely on results elsewhere later on.
Notts have Yorkshire, Lancashire and Durham in their group, which looks like one of the toughest routes in the competition, before they have rivalry matches against Leicestershire and Derbyshire. It should make for a more competitive, more watchable tournament from the off.
And then there is Trent Bridge itself, a ground that does not need much forced romance. This is a stadium that has hosted Ashes Tests and World Cup fixtures. On a Friday afternoon in May or June, when the ground starts filling up and the sun is still well up at first ball, it is one of the better places to watch live sport in the country.
Tom Moores said recently that visiting players always comment on the atmosphere, that it is consistently one of their favourite grounds to play at.
The first fixture is May 22, with back-to-back home games on June 5 and 7, which for most students lands right at the end of the exam period. There are worse ways to mark the occasion than seven hours at Trent Bridge for a tenner.
Ollie Stevenson
