Middlesex County Cricket Club and their principal sponsor Brooks Macdonald have named opening batsman, Sam Robson, as their choice for the Brooks Macdonald Player of the Month for April 2016, following his outstanding start to the season in Division One of the Specsavers County Championship.
Robson backed up a solid Middlesex pre-season, when he warmed up for this year’s campaign with red-ball knocks of 75 against Northamptonshire at Merchant Taylors’ School and 99 against Essex at Chelmsford, with a phenomenal individual performance in Middlesex’s opening County Championship clash of the season at Lord’s.
Against visitors Warwickshire Robson re-wrote the record books! He became the first player in Middlesex’s 152-year history to score both a double century and a century in one first-class match, with a career highest innings of 231 in the first innings and 106 in the second. When surpassing 319 runs in the game he broke a record set way back in 1893, by the great Andrew Stoddart, for the highest match aggregate ever scored by a Middlesex player at Lord’s. And he then broke the record of Middlesex legend, Jack Robertson, when he amassed 337 runs in the match, beating the 331 Robertson set in 1949, as the highest match aggregate by a Middlesex player on any ground. Despite Robson’s mammoth achievements, prolonged bad weather at Lord’s saw the game against Warwickshire frustratingly end in a draw.
In Middlesex’s next County Championship encounter against Durham, at the Emirates Riverside ground, Robson scored 26 in an opening first innings stand of 58 with partner Nick Gubbins, as Middlesex again had to settle for a draw, with persistent rain, and even snow at one point forcing an early end to proceedings.
Scoring 363 first-class runs at an average of 121.00 throughout the two first-class matches in April, Robson was the stand out Middlesex performer in the month, and was the unanimous choice for the opening Player of the Month award of the 2016 season.
On being named as the Brooks Macdonald Player of the Month for April 2016, Sam Robson commented...
“To have started the season in good form and to be contributing for the team at the top of the order is extremely satisfying. Hopefully we can continue to play good cricket and some positive results will start to come our way.”
Robson was presented with a magnum of champagne and a cheque for £1000 by Justin Woolf, Regional Business Development Manager of Brooks Macdonald, during the lunch interval of Middlesex’s Specsavers County Championship match against Somerset at Lord’s on Tuesday.
