Middlesex County Cricket Club Latest News

Middlesex complete a comfortable 201 run win over Cardiff UCCE

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Middlesex completed a comfortable 201 run win over Cardiff UCCE at Richmond; after Middlesex declared on their overnight total of 165-5, the students never looked like getting anywhere near the 358 run target.

After Danny Evans bowled Benton (6) in the third over of the morning, David Burton took three quick wickets to reduce the UCCE to 22-4 in the tenth over. Burton had Bishop (3) caught at second slip by Billy Godleman, M.Jones caught at the wicket for a duck before having Patrick Fallis caught at third slip for three. Barber and Senn took Cardiff UCCE to 50-4 in the 19th over before Danny Evans had Barber caught at the wicket for 17. A.Jones joined Senn and they added 29 runs for the sixth wicket before Senn was run out for 28 attempting a run that was never on. Jones was missed by Godleman in the following over but Tom Hampton trapped Jones (12) LBW, next ball.

The students went into lunch on 92-7. Kabir Toor came on to bowl immediately after lunch, and bowled Wadlan (6) with his fifth delivery. With Allin injured and unable to bat, Ransley and Moore held Middlesex up for forty minutes during which time they added 64 runs for the ninth wicket before Sunil Tailor had Ransley caught at slip for 30. Cardiff UCCE were all-out for 156 with Moore 37 not out; David Burton had figures of 3-31 from 8 overs and Danny Evans 2-26 from 13 overs

Middlesex versus Cardiff UCCE - day two

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

At the end of the second day’s play, Middlesex had a lead of 357 runs with five second innings wickets intact against Cardiff UCCE at Richmond. An overnight declaration is likely and the students face the daunting prospect of batting all-day on a wicket taking some spin.

In the morning, the Cardiff UCCE openers Bishop and Benton took their partnership to 71 before Bishop (39) was bowled by David Burton. Eighteen year-old seam bowler Tom Hampton, a product of the Middlesex Academy, then embarked on a fine spell of bowling, taking the wickets of Fallis LBW for nine and Senn caught at second slip for a duck; Hampton finished with figures of 2-12 from ten overs. With Adam London having Benton stumped for 39, the visitors went into lunch on 106-5.

Kabir Toor bowled Wadlan (7) in the fifth over after the interval before London trapped Ransley LBW for a duck. Sunil Tailor returned with his left-arm spin at the Pagoda End and took two wickets in his opening over to reduce the UCCE to 139-9; Barber (25) was caught at second slip by Dan Housego and Moore hit the following delivery straight to Danny Evans at mid-on to be dismissed for a duck. Jones and Allin added 22 runs for the last wicket before Allin (9) was caught at slip to give Tailor a third wicket as the UCCE were all-out for 161.

Tailor had figures of 3-45 from 12.5 overs with Adam London 3-26 from 15 overs. With Allin injured and unable to bowl, Middlesex coach Toby Radford agreed to let the UCCE 12th man Kelly replace Allin.

It was Kelly who took the opening Middlesex wicket when Billy Godleman was caught at the wicket for three. Adam London was bowled by A.Jones for eight but Sam Robson and Ben Scott saw Middlesex to tea on 39-2. Robson and Scott took Middlesex to 90-2 before Robson, who had hit Wadlan for 15 runs in the space of four balls in the previous over, gave Ransley a return catch to be dismissed for 49.

Dan Housego made 30 off just 26 balls, including six boundaries, before he was run out by Benton's throw to the keeper. John Simpson (4) hit Wadlan straight to Ransley at mid-on but Kabir Toor joined Ben Scott at the wicket and they saw Middlesex to 165-5 at the close of the second day; Scott reached his fifty just before the close (off 110 balls, 4 fours).

totesport Bounty Initiative - a ton per run if Napier's record is broken

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Twenty20 Cup re-starts on Monday 22th June and official partner totesport will be resuming the charity bounty initiative that will see the bookmaker donate £100 per run to any player who manages to beat Graham Napier’s record-breaking 152 not out during this year’s competition.

Napier’s mammoth innings came for his club Essex in their match against Sussex in last year’s tournament which included a world record 16 sixes from 58 balls. The Essex batsman has gone from strength to strength since and has been picked for England’s World Cup Twenty20 squad having also been part of the Mumbai Indians squad in the Indian Premier League.

Napier would have landed £15,200 for charity based on this initiative last year and the big-hitting superstar reckons it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that his record could go this year.

‘It was a fantastic feeling playing that innings last year. By the end of it, I was seeing just how far I could hit the ball! I believe I am able of playing that type of innings again but there are plenty of good cricketers out there capable of bettering that score as well - good luck to them!” said Napier, who was speaking at the launch of the totesport Bounty Initiative at the County Cricket Ground, Chelmsford.

totesport make it an 8/1 shot that Graham Napier’s 152 not out is bettered this season in the Twenty20 Cup and it’s 25/1 that Napier himself breaks his own record.

‘Graham’s incredible knock last season has set the bar very high but we’ve seen several records broken since the Twenty20 Cup began and this bounty should tempt a few of the other players to have a crack at beating his score,’ said totesport spokesman George Primarolo.

If the record is not broken, totesport will give £5,000 to the player who gets the highest score in this year’s Twenty20 Cup. The money will be donated to the charity of player’s choice.

Lancashire are the current favourites after their flying start to the season and are clear at the head of the market at 9/2. Kent, Northamptonshire and Somerset are all next in the market at 7/1, with Essex and Hampshire following on 8/1.

Twenty20 Cup – totesport bet: 9/2 Lancashire, 7 Kent, Northampton, Somerset, 8 Essex, Hampshire, 9 Yorkshire, 10 Sussex, 12 Worcestershire, 16 Warwickshire, 20 Durham, Leicestershire, 25 Surrey, 40 Derbyshire, 100 Gloucestershire, Nottinghamshire, Glamorgan, 200 Middlesex.”

ANDREW STRAUSS - The Honourable Gentleman

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

If England beat Australia this summer it will be Andrew Strauss who gets to hold that famous urn aloft. And without sounding over-confident, he fancies his chances. After all, his team are at home this time, and that, according to the captain, makes all the difference in the world.

It's just over a year since I last spoke properly with Andrew Strauss. It seems longer. Back then he was part-way through the process of restoring himself to full health as an international cricketer. A poor trot with the bat - 16 games without reaching three-figures - saw his largely untroubled 44-Test run end.

A tour to Sri Lanka was missed, before a somewhat unexpected - and, some felt at the time, unjustified - recall for England's tour to New Zealand. A big hundred eventuated at Napier in the team's last game of the winter, an innings described by Strauss on our last meeting as not unlike drinking in the last chance saloon. And glug long and deep he duly did.

After a first innings duck, 177 second innings runs were extricated from McLean Park's convivial surface and the left-hander, once ranked as the eighth best batsman in the world, was again on his way. Another hundred, this time 106 at Old Trafford - once more against Daniel Vettori's battlers - and the rehabilitation was now complete. Strauss was back where he belonged. Opening for England.

Although this time not with Marcus Trescothick; Strauss' perfect tried-and-trusted southpaw foil had made his exit. Alastair Cook was charged with knocking the shine off. It was to be a different alliance. One that more naturally lent itself to a different, more considered dynamic. Where previously Trescothick was the one to light England's blue touchpaper and Strauss the one left to step well back. Now, a more even-handed course of action was the order of the day. One of classy, uncomplicated two-pronged attrition rather than someone just keeping an end going; offering non-striker's end support of the "if it's up, it's off" Somerset thunderer.

Our conversation in May last year was a relaxed one. Stood before me then was a man who was back in form and favour and fully realised and appreciated what he had, what he'd lost and what he had managed to recapture. Strauss, once again, looked set to take his career forward.

Now, a year later, that second coming has informed the self-awareness of a man with the rounded education that cricket affords those who stick at it for any amount of time. Lessons are no better learned, whether borne of success or failure. He was a captain-in-waiting.

These days he's a veteran of 61 Tests. His England have just seen off West Indies at Lord's in three days. Strauss making 16 and 14 not out in the game. But batting, as we all now know, is not the Middlesex man's sole focus. He's captain of the side - something unthinkable when we sat drinking rounds of coffee in the team hotel just 12 months previously.

In the time between that innings at Napier and now, Strauss has made seven hundreds in 27 innings at an average of 60.25. As we speak, he is in transit, north. His side has a second date with Chris Gayle's team - a side currently looking raw enough to induce a bout of salmonella. After a one-nil defeat at the hands of the same mob in the Caribbean, Strauss' England look a fair bet to settle the score.

At the end of last summer it was Kevin Pietersen's team. Coached by Peter Moores. At the beginning of this term it's the Strauss-Andy Flower top table that holds sway.

After small talk of motorway services, five-hour journeys, Scotch Corner and pukka pies, on the back of all the changes, personal and otherwise, over the previous months, I ironically ask Strauss if anything much has happened to him since we last spoke? "No, nothing much," he says, instantly playing along. He's a convivial chap, bright as a button and intuitive, if generally on his guard, with the media. "I've played a bit of cricket. Can't think of anything else, no."

Clearly much water has gone under Strauss' bridge, and over it, round it and nigh-on engulfed it. We've had terror attacks and team evacuations in India, Stanford, Pietersen v Moores, a ground no better than a landfill site at Antigua and now England have picked a bloke named Onions. Add to that we're in an Ashes year and it sounds a recipe for another summer of disappointment for this country's fans. "You'd have to say that it's been a bit of a whirlwind," concedes the captain, thinking about his first few months in charge. "The weird thing is that if you're busy, there's less time to think and that's sometimes a good thing. Especially as a batsman."

"It's only been lately that I've started to look at a proper long-term strategy to take the team forward. England have always done a fair amount of short-term planning, but less of the sort of stuff that will see us progress over the next five years.

Despite the aforementioned lows, Strauss' own progress over the previous half-decade has been one of mainly ups. Since that fantastic debut (112 and 83) against New Zealand at Lord's in 2004 - a performance so good it hastened the retirement of then-captain Nasser Hussain - the 32-year-old's easy run-gathering has been a constant theme in England's success. Equally, Strauss' isolated tough times have tended to mirror the team's own struggles.

A fantastic trot of scoring by Strauss and the rest of England's batting order and results, the likes of which hadn't been seen before or since, prompted many to feel that England were the best side in the world when beating Australia in 2005. They looked like a team whose collective rise to that point in September at the Oval had been almost flawlessly navigated by Michael Vaughan and Duncan Fletcher.

In hindsight it bore the characteristics of an immaculately produced souffle. Like that most delicate but delightful dessert, it was perfect, but for a moment. With all the hoopla and post-Ashes flag-waving in Trafalgar Square the metaphorical crust was burst. The air escaped. England's most potent side of the modern era became a delicious memory.

I casually mention to the captain that, unless he hadn't noticed, we've the Aussies to play mid-summer, and that my abiding memory of him in the greatest ever Test series is two-fold. His amazing diving slip catch to remove Adam Gilchrist off Andrew Flintoff's bowling at Trent Bridge. And of completing a brilliant hundred at Old Trafford during the second innings of the third Test only for the images of the moment to record that he did so with an enormous bandage on his left ear, after being struck by a Brett Lee bouncer. "The physio (Kirk Russell) still gets a lot of stick for that," states Strauss. "I did look a right idiot, didn't I?"

We continue with the Ashes as a theme. I ask about the health of England's elephant-not-currently-in-the-corner, Sir Fred of Preston. "Look, I'm not going to say that the Ashes will be lost if Freddie isn't fit, but what he's done in the past against them, let's not kid ourselves into thinking that it doesn't matter if he's not out there. It does. I'm led to believe that he'll be fit - and all the indications are good for him - but, as part of the planning process I mentioned earlier, we'll still need to know the squad of 14 or 15 players that we feel can see us through the series."

I ask Strauss if he knows his best XI and after much thought he says he does. Without expanding on it, he commits the names to memory and nothing else. Instead, he talks about the first Test in Cardiff, a venue choice that has raised more eyebrows than a London botox clinic.

"If the pitch turns, people will say it's a masterstroke to play Australia there. All talk of the perceived home advantage that we have conceded by not playing at Old Trafford and Trent Bridge will be forgotten..." Strauss pauses to compose his thoughts. He is about to deliver something important. Something that he believes to be key. Something he is saying to me and by that same token, something I feel he is hoping will be read by the tourists. Strauss is giving me a memorandum of intent. "Australia are hugely inexperienced in English conditions - particularly the bowling - and I expect that home advantage will play an enormous part in the series."

"As far as predictions go, I think they're ridiculous. We can't possibly know what lies ahead of us. But we hold home advantage. They lack experience. And if it spins in Wales, it could be the perfect start for us."

And in possession, as Strauss is, of a potentially potent spin pairing in Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann, who would have thought England would, four short years on, hold sway over Australia in this particular department? With Australia looking like sending out three left-handers in their top five, Swann's irrepressible rise as a wicket-taking finger spinner could be more of an influence than imaginable only a few months previous. "The reality is that there aren't many about," proffers Strauss of his former England Academy room-mate. "there are very few off-spinners in world cricket. And he's hard to bat against, particularly as a left-hander. His drift into you makes him hard to line up for a sweep or a drive over the top, he bowls very few short balls and he's versatile. Working with him, as a captain, he's not one of those spinners who is blinkered by his own thinking. He'll try things if he thinks you have a valid point. He's a good bowler - although I've always said that as someone to share a room with, he's a two weeks, tops, bloke. Maybe three weeks now. At a push!"

If I were pushed - as Strauss would need to be to share accommodation with AOC's columnist - I'd say that the captain fancies his chances against the Australians. Clearly not in a Glenn McGrath "we're going to win 15-0" kind of way, but in his own, sharper-than-steel, deliberate manner, this bunch of men in baggy caps hold few demons for England's opener. Far less, in fact, than the media would have us believe. And as he says, with the benefit of home turf, it's a more even series than some would have it, especially now England have effectively bolted a spin bowling annexe to their winter caravan. All eyes will indeed be on Sophia Gardens come July 8.

With England looking more settled off the field - if not completely rock solid on it - much has been written about the revised captain/coach axis. "You'd think we're living together, if you believe the press," jokes Strauss about the nature of his working relationship with the new director of cricket Andy Flower. In his more pragmatic �influence from within" outlook to captaincy and leadership there are obvious differences with the previous incumbent.

"I'm very much in the position of still having a look - it's never good to rush into these things like a bull in a china shop."

"I do get on fine with Andy. He's an honest guy who is greatly respected as a former top-class player. And he wants to get things right. As a management team we're not looking as far ahead as thinking about any notion of our legacy - we're nowhere near in that position yet - but we are constantly talking about what we can do better and how we can improve things."

Finally, I ask Andrew Strauss to sum up his first few games as England captain. He does so in two words, "Eye opener," before elaborating further. "But I think that's the way the England captaincy goes. And always has. Things happen and you�re asked to react to them. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, and broadly I'd have to say that already I've got a lot out of it. But that is the way it is. Being England captain has been eye-opening"

THIS ARTICLE WAS PROVIDED BY ALL OUT CRICKET
BY Andy Afford

Middlesex versus Cardiff UCCE - day one

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A Middlesex team which included only one player from the team that played against Essex in the LV County Championship that finished on Tuesday, batted first at Richmond and scored 353-5 declared on the opening day of a three-day match against Cardiff UCCE. The UCCE replied with 9-0 in the remaining six overs of play.

After Ben Scott won the toss and elected to bat first, Billy Godleman and Sam Robson opened the batting for Middlesex. Robson had made just six runs before Allin, who is on the Warwickshire staff, trapped him LBW. Adam London joined Godleman and they took the score to 54-1 before London was caught at the wicket off Moore for 19. Ben Scott joined Godleman and the pair saw Middlesex to 115-2 at lunch (Godleman 47 not out, Scott 37 not out) after 39 overs. Godleman reached his fifty in the second over after the break (off 118 balls, 7 fours) and went on to reach a hundred (off 187 balls, 14 fours) before he was caught at cover for 107, his partnership with Scott having realised 161 runs for the third wicket.

Scott, who reached his fifty off 111 balls (7 fours), was 81 not out at tea from a total of 235-3 after 79 overs. Scott added only seven runs after the interval before he was LBW to A.Jones for 88, the new ball having been taken in the second over after tea. John Simpson made eleven before he gave a return catch to Allin to reduce Middlesex to 274-5. Dan Housego and Kabir Toor then cut loose, adding 79 runs in 11 overs before the declaration came. Housego was 62 not out (off 93 balls, 1 six & 4 fours) with Toor 35 not out (off 31 balls, 7 fours).