The curtain comes down on Middlesex’s 2019 season this week at Lord’s with some familiar faces returning to the Home of Cricket with visiting side Derbyshire.
Middlesex’s former batting coach Dave Houghton and former opener Billy Godleman now both reside at Derbyshire’s County Ground as Head Coach and Captain respectively, and they’ll be looking forward to a return to St John’s Wood on the back of an impressive win last week against Sussex. A follow up win for Derbyshire at Lord’s this week could see them secure their highest finish in the County Championship since the 2014 season - when they finished fourth in Division Two.
Middlesex enter this week’s game having been beaten in each of their last three County Championship encounters, against Sussex at Hove, by Durham at Lord’s, and finally by Lancashire just last week at Old Trafford. The run of defeats has seen Middlesex drop from promotion hopefuls just three weeks ago, to a side languishing in eighth place in the Division Two table, with just pride to play for and with promotion a dim and distant aspiration.
Derbyshire currently sit in seventh place in the table, just ten points ahead of Middlesex, and it’s former Middlesex man Godleman who has led the way for them this year. He has four centuries to his name and is just nineteen runs short of bringing up one thousand Championship runs this summer.
With the ball the right-arm/left-arm combo of Ravi Rampaul and Luis Reece have done most damage for the visitors this season, with Rampaul, the former West Indies quick, accounting for 44 wickets this term, whilst left-armer Reece has 48 to his name. Both will pose plenty of threat at Lord’s this week, especially with cloudy and overcast conditions being forecast in North London for large parts of the game.
Despite Middlesex’s loss last week to Champions Lancashire at Old Trafford, Head Coach Stuart Law will have been encouraged by the individual performances of pace trio James Harris, Ethan Bamber and Miguel Cummins – all who looked threatening and in good rhythm with the ball, whilst wicket-keeper batsman John Simpson hit a career high first-class knock of 167*.
Middlesex have named the following fifteen-man squad for tomorrow’s final clash of the season…
Dawid Malan (c)
Martin Andersson
Ethan Bamber
Miguel Cummins
Stephen Eskinazi
Steven Finn
Nick Gubbins
James Harris
Max Holden
Tim Murtagh
Toby Roland-Jones
Sam Robson
George Scott
John Simpson (wk)
Nathan Sowter
LIVE STREAM AVAILABLE FOR THIS MATCH ON MIDDLESEX WEBSITE
Middlesex Cricket will be live streaming the Middlesex vs Derbyshire Specsavers County Championship match on our own website this week, with live commentary provided by BBC Radio.
The live stream, action replay clips, a live ball by ball scorecard and match highlights of every day’s play will be available on the Middlesex website in the MATCH CENTRE.
Please note, the live stream will only be available shortly before the start of play.
Middlesex
Derbyshire
