Of course, the weather is set fair. They are chasing 31, with Joe Clarke and Chris Nash set as fair as the blue sky.
I let Ravi Bopara open the bowling. Why not? He’s bowled well all season and, considering I’m going to savagely sack him at the end of the season, it feels like the least I can do.
Fourth ball of the opening over he wafts one outside off stump, Laurie Evans dives to his right and Nash is gone for 17. 167-3.
Mitchell Claydon has a beauty of an lbw shout waved off against Clarke. He responds by slamming him for a boundary. 25 to win.
As they move through the gears, Clarke and Samit Patel tick the runs off.
With the chase down to four tiny runs, Bopara takes Clarke out of the game as the 24 year old tries to smack the leather off it and is caught at short point by van Zyl in another of my “ambitious” fielding innovations.
Because this team like to toy with my emotions, next over Claydon decides to trap Patel leg before wicket, moving Notts to 194-5.
Although five wicket for four runs is, perhaps, unlikely, it will be the hope that kills me.
In the end, we lose this game in the most pathetic fashion imaginable. After all that hope, all that effort, David Wiese – our best player by a country mile all season – bowls a pie on middle stump. Haseeb Hameed paddles a ball that goes through the legs of our keeper Ben Brown and trundles to the bundle in embarrassed fashion. 198-5, we lose by five wickets.
Ben Duckett – for his 115 in the first innings and 63 in the second – takes the man of the match fizz.
For us, Bopara’s 3-26 are the best bowling figures and Travis Head’s 108* the stand out batting contribution.
Notts take 21 points to our 3. We plummet to 8th. Out of 8.
We have one game to go. Want to know who it is against?
That’s right, Middlesex. Who are top.
