After making a hash of their only experience of top-flight championship cricket last summer, the county are desperate to make the earliest possible return to Division One.
If they beat Derbyshire they will have won five consecutive matches for the first time since 1925, and that promotion bid would be well set. Whether Chris Read will achieve similar personal ambition of promotion back into the England Test and one-day sides is more doubtful. The 25-year-old has done little wrong, but first he lost his Test place in the Caribbean and then last weekend he was ousted from the one-day squad.
When Geraint Jones was preferred for the first Test against New Zealand Read said he did not feel sorry for himself and proceeded to hit a century against Durham.
But with the one-day rejection, philosophy turned to understandable petulance. “It makes me a little angry,” was his modest complaint.
Read still looked in angry mood yesterday as he took out his frustrations on a Derbyshire attack which had suffered as Jason Gallian and Kevin Pietersen put on 217 — a Nottinghamshire third-wicket record against their neighbours.
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After Mo Sheikh had removed Pietersen and David Hussey with consecutive balls, Read proceeded to rush to an entertaining 120-ball century.
In the process he and Gallian broke a 90-year-old record for the fifth wicket against Derbyshire, worth 199, before he edged behind after making 130 in just 138 balls