With a three-day win against Hampshire, the second such victory they have recorded in a row, Nottinghamshire established a 12-point gap at the summit of Division One of the Rothesay County Championship.

The fact that they did so with no fewer than five Academy graduates in the starting XI will be an additional source of pride to the Green and Golds’ members and supporters.

All of Farhan Ahmed, Brett Hutton, Lyndon James, Freddie McCann and Liam Patterson-White grew up and learned their cricketing craft within the county’s borders.

Against Hampshire, four of the five combined to claim 15 out of 20 visiting wickets, with all ten in the second innings being shared between Hutton, James, and Patterson-White.

James picked up match figures of 7/66, including 5/22 as Hampshire were blown away in their second innings, to tee up Notts’ second-largest winning margin by runs in County Championship history.

Hutton also claimed four wickets, while Ahmed wrapped up the first innings with a scalp inside his first two deliveries, as well as snaffling the game-winning catch.

Poetically, it just so happened that the bowler of that ball that nestled in Ahmed’s hands was none other than Patterson-White, capping a homegrown-driven win in a near-perfect manner.

Meanwhile the entirety of the quintet scored 381 between them - more than half of the total runs notched by Notts across the clash - including two sizeable centuries from the respective blades of McCann and Patterson-White.

For the latter, his ton in the second innings was his maiden one on the Trent Bridge turf, his first having come away to Somerset in 2021.

Fittingly, that too was in a three-day victory, by an innings and 160 runs, as Hutton and James also featured in the Notts line-up.

However, while that trio have grown into longer-serving homegrown heroes, Ahmed and McCann were aged just 13 and 16, respectively, at the time.

While both were rising fast through the player pathway at the time, they were making their names at their respective Nottinghamshire Premier League clubs.

In fact, Ahmed had made his first XI debut for Cavaliers & Carrington just ten days before the completion of that Somerset win.

Naturally, he claimed figures of 5/11 in just 3.4 overs as his side eked out a 12-run win over Mansfield Hosiery Mills via the DLS method.

For McCann, read his unbeaten 80 for his side, Papplewick & Linby, in a ten-wicket win away to Attenborough, where he also returned figures of 1/25 from six overs with the ball.

Three years on, both would graduate fully into the Nottinghamshire First-Class XI, with McCann announcing his arrival with 51 and 154 in his first two games.

Ahmed, meanwhile, made his own bow a week after McCann, against champions-elect Surrey, and kicked things off with a masterful ten-wicket match haul, including seven in the first innings.

Patterson-White, James, and Hutton were all present too, and all of the quintet are now key cogs in the machine that has driven the Green and Golds to the top of Division One in a sparkling start to the 2025 summer.

Notts’ new Vitality Blast kit may proudly feature the wording ‘Where Legends Grow” stitched into the back of the collar, but lately, the sentiment rings just as true in the red-ball arena too.