Durham pacer James Minto achieves unique feat with bat, scores half-century as night watchman in County Championship

England’s traditional County Cricket is known for producing some brilliant cricketers in international cricket. In the same vein, Durham’s teenage talent James Minto achieved a unique feat in the County Division One game against Nottinghamshire. In an unexpected turnaround of events, Minto came to open the innings with skipper Alex Lees for Durham.

He went on to stitch an opening partnership of 111 runs with skipper Lees and also scored his First-Class career’s first half-century, that too while batting as a night watchman. The 17-year-old scored 67 runs off 113 balls, hitting 11 fours with the bat and registering a strike rate of 59.29.

Durham in a commanding position after a strong start on day 2

Speaking of the action of the game, Durham posted 320 runs for the loss of 4 wickets on the second day of the game in response to Nottinghamshire’s first-innings total of 407 runs. Besides the half-century scored by James Minto, skipper Alex Lees also scored 82 runs. Later in the innings, middle-order batter Emilio Gay also scored 74 runs off 156 balls, with seven fours, going unbeaten at the end of the day, alongside wicketkeeper-batter Ollie Robinson.

Mohammad Abbas scalped 2 wickets, alongside a wicket each picked by Brett Hutton and Liam Patterson-White for Nottinghamshire.

While batting first, Nottinghamshire posted a total of 407 runs, owing to the sensational double century scored by skipper and opener Haseeb Hameed. He scored 206 runs off 241, hitting 30 fours and 3 sixes, with a brilliant strike rate of 85.47. Following him, Ben Slater and wicketkeeper-batter Kyle Verreynne also played the crucial knocks of 52 and 41 runs, respectively.

Codi Yusuf scalped 4 wickets for Durham in the first innings, alongside 3 wickets claimed by Brydon Carse. Besides these two, Ben Raine, James Minto, and George Drissell also bagged a wicket each for their side in the first innings.