George Hill keeps the lights burning for Yorkshire at Trent Bridge

So said Anthony McGrath, the Yorkshire head coach, of all-rounder George Hill prior to this match.

He was speaking on the back of Hill’s highest score of the season - 89 against Somerset at Headingley last week, which helped Yorkshire thrash the then league leaders.

If that innings was a rearguard performance, an act of defiance during a match-winning century partnership with Dom Bess, Hill’s fifty at Trent Bridge on Friday was far more aggressive.

His counter-attacking 58 was the highest score of the Yorkshire first innings and kept his side in the match, taking them to 179 all-out in reply to 251 before Nottinghamshire ended day two on 55-3, 127 in front.

You cannot keep Hill out of the action for long. He was the man who wrapped up the Nottinghamshire first innings 13 minutes into the morning session, having Olly Stone caught at third slip by Will Luxton after the hosts started the day on 242-9.

Stone had struck the day’s first ball from Coad to the cover boundary before four leg-byes in Hill’s next over earned Nottinghamshire a batting point.

Yorkshire began their reply beneath a brooding sky, the floodlights on and earlier slivers of sunshine a fading memory.

For Adam Lyth, the day carried a special significance. It was his 39th birthday, and this was the ground where, back in 2008, he had made the first of his 41 first-class hundreds.

He began brightly enough, cover-driving Stone for four, but there was to be no birthday landmark for the veteran opener. In the 11th over, Stone got one to nibble away and find the edge, leaving Yorkshire 26-2 after Will Luxton had also been given out caught behind off the same bowler, a decision that did not best please Lyth’s opening partner. When Brett Hutton had Sam Whiteman edging to second slip, Yorkshire were 33-3 and in early difficulty.

James Wharton and Matty Revis took the score to 67 at lunch, and then on to 90 before Wharton was caught at second slip off Stone. It was the first of four wickets for 18 runs as Yorkshire slipped to 108-7.

Stone uprooted Jonny Bairstow’s middle stump with one that nipped back through the gate. Revis was adjudged run-out by umpire Nigel Llong, pushing Hutton to Haseeb Hameed at mid-off, who threw down the stumps with the batsman having just made his ground, according to the replays. Bess was then caught at third slip for a duck off Hutton.

Ben Coad was eighth out at 124, turned around by a ball from Mohammad Ali and caught at second slip, after which Hill took matters into his own hands. He pulled Stone for four and then scooped him for a remarkable six, a shot Harry Brook would have been proud of. He reached his fifty from 46 deliveries.

Ben Cliff had contributed six to a ninth-wicket stand of 47 when Stone had him caught at first slip, his fifth wicket of the innings and his 50th of the County Championship season. No sooner had he celebrated his double milestone than Stone was substituted out of the match and replaced by Tom Giles, apparently due to injury.

Eventually, Hill chanced his arm once too often and was stumped advancing at left-arm spinner Liam Patterson-White, his 58 coming from 57 balls with seven fours to go with the six. He was one of only four Yorkshire players to reach double figures, a stark statistic in a season of top-order struggles.

With the deficit at 72, Yorkshire were in trouble but by no means out of it. As ever, they started well with the ball, Coad and Jack White setting the usual miserly tone.

Bairstow took a quite magnificent one-handed catch, low to his left, to dismiss Ben Slater off Coad in the third over, then claimed a more regulation take in the next over when Hameed dabbled at a delivery from White.

It should have been 10-3, but Bess, uncharacteristically, dropped a fairly routine catch by his high standards at leg-slip when Coad induced a false shot from Joe Clarke.

Not that the prolific Clarke made the most of his fortune. Hill had him caught behind for eight as Nottinghamshire slipped to 24-3 in the 11th over, Clarke having failed twice in the match.

In deteriorating light, batting looked a tricky proposition, and Jack Haynes and Ben Martindale did not exactly look displeased when umpires Llong and Michael Gough decided to take the players off the field at 5.25pm, with 15 overs left.

The umpires lingered on the field for a time, talking to the groundstaff as they do at such moments, while a handful of spectators waited patiently in the stands, although most eventually gave up and wandered home.

Finally, at 5.55pm, play was abandoned and the remaining spectators reluctantly drifted away.

Yorkshire, thanks in no small part to that man Hill, were still in the mix.