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<\/p>\nOlly Stone says he is \u201cabsolutely loving [his] cricket,\u201d as Nottinghamshire\u2019s Rothesay County Championship season hurtles towards a climax with a penultimate-round trip to Sussex.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t put it down to anything in particular,\u201d Stone said of his recent hot form. \u201cI\u2019m just absolutely loving my cricket at the moment, which will play a big part.<\/p>\n
\u201cThankfully the ball\u2019s coming out nicely, but really, I\u2019m just trying not to put too much pressure on myself, where I just run in and try and hit the top of off with a bit of shape.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m keeping it simple in that way, and if it carries on finding the pad or the stumps, then happy days, so yes, the fact I\u2019m loving playing, as well as the possibility of a title at the end, they keep you occupied.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat definitely narrows your focus, but really, there\u2019s nothing better than playing cricket and taking wickets, so long may that continue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stone forms part of a 15-strong squad for the trip to the South Coast, with Mohammad Ali making his return after featuring in Pakistan\u2019s recent Test series against England.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With the additions of Ali and new signing Mukesh Kumar, Fraser Sheat has returned home to New Zealand after appearing in two First-Class matches for Notts.<\/p>\n
Stone is enthused by the opportunity to operate alongside Kumar and Ali, while also showering all of his seam bowling colleagues with praise.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have the world class experience of those two coming in, and Mohammad Ali coming back, it\u2019s 100% good to see,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, we\u2019ll see how we line up tomorrow, but yes, to have the likes of those two to rub ideas off, and also just to add to our bowling attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be disappointing for whoever misses out because our attack have been very good in the last few games, but it just goes to show the strength that we\u2019ve got.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Stone, that strength will be key as the season reaches its conclusion, though he notes there is an interesting aspect to this round in particular.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very exciting to go into this point of the season knowing that we can still win the trophy. That\u2019s obviously what you aim to do at the start of the year,\u201d the 32-year-old said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a great win from the boys last week to put us in a position where we\u2019re still in with a shout, and it\u2019s really exciting now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a ground that I haven\u2019t been to too much over the years, so it\u2019s a nice change to come here, and hopefully we\u2019ll get four good days of cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having assessed the conditions on arrival at the 1st Central County Ground, Stone believes a good contest is in store for the Green and Golds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it looks like a good cricket wicket,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s still a little bit of live grass on there at the moment, and it feels pretty hard underneath, so hopefully it will be a good wicket.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, if you get in, there\u2019s probably a few runs in it, but also, there\u2019s enough in it to suggest that if you put the ball in the right area, there\u2019ll be a decent enough chance to take those wickets.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for this week\u2019s hosts, Stone is expecting a keenly-fought battle against a strong side, but is backing Notts to get the job done.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will absolutely be a good challenge. They\u2019ve shown this year how well they\u2019ve done, and yes, people may have written them off at the start of the year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredit to them for the way they\u2019ve played this year, and credit to the players who have appeared for them in the fight that they\u2019ve put up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just hoping they don\u2019t put up too much of a good fight this week, and I feel like if we have a good four days\u2019 cricket, we should hopefully come out on the right side of the result.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olly Stone says he is \u201cabsolutely loving [his] cricket,\u201d as Nottinghamshire\u2019s Rothesay County Championship season hurtles towards a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[18304,1721,18306,15257,18308,101,18303,18305,56,54,55,18307],"class_list":["post-770972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-bridge","tag-cricket","tag-nottingham","tag-nottinghamshire","tag-outlaws","tag-sports","tag-trent","tag-trentbridge","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-west-bridgford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}