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Nottinghamshire, who only just darted away from the closing doors of relegation last summer, are the surprise winners of the 2025 County Championship, ending Surrey’s run of wins from 2022 to 2024, and collecting their first title since 2010.
It came with a big beautiful six from Kyle Verreynne, which arced over the midwicket boundary and took Notts past the magic 300-run mark, gave them a second batting bonus point, and made them uncatchable.
The white bucket seats at Trent Bridge, increasingly filled by scurrying fans in autumnal fleeces, burst into applause, the players on the balcony whooped and Liam Patterson-White and Verreynne, who hit the winning runs for South Africa in the World Test Championship final in June, hugged in the middle of the pitch.
It is Nottinghamshire’s seventh title and there is something entirely suitable that an unfairly unfancied competition now belongs to two unfairly unfancied men, the head coach, Peter Moores, and the captain, Haseeb Hameed, whose careers have ebbed and flowed, into the limelight and back again.
Moores becomes the first coach to win the Championship with three counties – Sussex in 2003, Lancashire in 2011 and now with Nottinghamshire. In between he coached England twice and was sacked by England twice, a situation he admitted begrudging over half a bottle of red wine before concluding that the game owed him nothing and going again.
Hameed’s fourth hundred of the year, which took Nottinghamshire to within dusting distance of the title, was a typical combination of beguiling strokeplay and resolute defence. He was the backbone of Nottinghamshire’s innings, as he has been all season – the most run-heavy of his career, behind only Surrey’s Dom Sibley.
To those who have followed Hameed’s journey from teenage wunderkind with Lancashire and England, to a young man who could not buy a run at Old Trafford, the move to Trent Bridge and then his elevation to the captaincy, Thursday was the happy ending to a favourite fairytale. He might not have been the obvious choice as a leader, but Moores and Mick Newell, the director of cricket at Trent Bridge, saw something in the batsman from Bolton, the “baby Boycott” discarded by England after 10 Tests.
After a first year of learning the ropes, he has excelled. His teammate Brett Huttontold the BBC: “He’s calm and he loves the game and the team. He wears his heart on his sleeve and he’s always 100% on it. He trusts the rest of the boys to do their job.”
However, the campaign has been a team and squad victory. Nine batters hit centuries and seven bowlers pocketed five-wicket hauls. Unlike 2024, players stayed fit and they hit the jackpot with their overseas players – fast bowlers Fergus O’Neill and Mohammad Abbas and Verreynne, the big-hitting wicketkeeper.
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More than anything, Notts held their nerve. They have lost one game, suddenly coming off the rails against Durham one mid-May afternoon at Chester-le-Street, but survived the Kookaburra rounds, keeping Surrey in sight. Of their six wins, none was more important than the thrilling 20-run knuckle-gnawer against Surrey at the Oval last week, spearheaded by a rampaging Josh Tongue.
That victory gave Notts a 14-point buffer and left them in charge of their own destiny and while Surrey’s first day at Southampton turned into a shambles, Notts kept their course.
“When you win a Championship, you don’t know it is going to be your year,” said a smiling Moores. “We beat Durham here, Josh Tongue got four wickets in 12 balls, you win two or three more and suddenly we’re at this game when pressure is different. For the first time we were favourites, you’re holding the ball, you can’t drop it.”
And they didn’t.
