Joe Clarke seduces a century with his debut in Nottinghamshire | sport

In the Trent Bridge, 2387 sturdy souls were seated, most of the time scattered around the white seats in pairs or singles, dark stakes in a brain game. Well before 10 o'clock in the morning, they had lunch and circulated the ground with balloon and blanket, the behavior long learned from the most faithful of the fans. They must be loyal, no championship season has been started earlier.

In the absence of Surrey, who played against MCCU, Nottinghamshire v Yorkshire was the most tantalizing match of the round. Notts, who just avoided relegation last season, went shopping, bolstering his stick and bowling with some of the best young players of the moment. The current glut is such that bowlers Mark Footitt and Luke Wood have been temporarily returned on loan.

But it was Joe Clarke, who left Worcestershire and was struck by the sun rising slowly in the late afternoon, which caught the eye. In his league debut for Notts, he made it a charming and undefeated 109 – his 14th century first clbad at 22.

Clarke had a brisk six-month period away from the game. He was called to testify in his ex-teammate Alex Hepburn's rape trial, and was dropped from the Lions group after revealing his membership in a dubious WhatsApp group. And he could still be called to testify in the new Hepburn trial, which begins on April 8.

However, there was no reason to suspect that the turmoil had hit his stick – just a tick of a knee crease, a high lift, then a succession of pretty, easy moves that made Nottinghamshire so keen to sign it. A tickle of the hips here, a push up there, a thumbs up, a crispy back off the road. As he was entering the nineties and the reports went out at around 6 pm, he slowed down, but there – a clip at midwicket, the first championship of the year. He punched the air, hugged teammate Tom Moores and raised his bat around the ground.

Ben Slater, who crossed Derbyshire at the end of last summer, and a confident 43 from Ben Duckett, also fresh from Northamptonshire, also had a good run.

Yorkshire bowlers struggled to break through. Duanne Olivier, who has left his place to the South African team to sign for Yorkshire, has found his first difficult spell. But he had to finish with two wickets after Slater was finally caught and Steven Mullaney pushes for a faster goal and is caught on the first shot. There were also two scalps for Yorkshire captain Steven Patterson. Ben Coad was cute but without a counter.

The match was billed as Joe Root – Stuart Broad, but Broad spent the day laying his feet in the clubhouse and Root spent hours on the loose with his hands in his pockets halfway through, although he had was called to scoop 12 rows. . They do not fear a little easy life. There is a long and beautiful summer of cricket to come.