Liam Norwell’s nine-wicket haul saves Warwickshire and relegates Yorkshire

The final day of the County Championship season left nails chewed down to the nub and hearts racing as a remarkable nine-wicket performance from Liam Norwell saw Warwickshire pull off the great escape and send Yorkshire tumbling into Division Two.

Defending just 139 runs against Hampshire under ominous skies at Edgbaston, second-bottom Warwickshire found themselves on the brink of becoming the fifth side in the era of promotion and relegation to follow winning the County Championship with the drop. As their head coach, Mark Robinson, later put it: “We needed snookers.”

Norwell had other ideas, his career-best figures of nine for 62 from 19 lung-busting overs sealing a staggering five-run victory that meant the trap door was dodged by a margin of three points. As well as those present, the denouement was watched by more 16,000 spectators online and, by nudging his side up to eighth in the table, the fast bowler broke the hearts of those doing so at Headingley.

“I just went mad – all the emotions came out,” said Norwell, visibly broken by his efforts, when asked to describe the winning moment. It came by trapping the No 11 Mohammad Abbas lbw for a four-ball duck, with Hampshire bowled out for 133 in 43.5 overs and forced to settle for third place behind Lancashire and champions Surrey.

This was only Norwell’s fourth match of a season blighted by injuries and one which, after a recent elbow problem, saw him given a “10% chance” of playing only to push through the pain. The 30-year-old was also on England’s reserve list for their Test tour of the Caribbean back in March, only to spend a month in hospital when his newborn son caught meningitis and cricket very much became secondary.

All was mercifully fine in that regard and