Middlesex Cricket’s First Team Coach, Richard Johnson, has named a squad of fourteen to face Gloucestershire this week in our final home clash of our Vitality County Championship campaign of the year.
This week’s match starts tomorrow at the earlier time of 10.30am and is the first of three crucial matches that will bring the 2024 season to a close, with Gloucestershire in opposition this week at Lord’s, followed by away trips to Derbyshire, starting on Tuesday 17th September, and Sussex in Hove, starting on Thursday 26th September.
We return to Lord’s having fought hard at Headingley last week to come away with a well-earned draw against Yorkshire, in what proved to be a drab and attritional high-scoring draw, with bowlers battling hard for little reward on a docile deck with minimal assistance from the placid Kookaburra ball and the batters thriving in favourable conditions.
Middlesex showed enormous determination and a real sense of calm with the bat under intense pressure to bat for the best part of two days to make the game safe, after Yorkshire had posted a massive 601 for 6 in their first innings. Scoreboard pressure does funny things to batters, yet Middlesex showed all the resolve that was required to come away from Headingley with the draw.
Hundreds from Sam Robson and Ryan Higgins were the mainstay of the Middlesex innings in Leeds as we posted 522 in reply, with useful half-centuries also coming from Max Holden and Jack Davies.
The outcome of last week’s endeavours was that Yorkshire closed the gap on Middlesex to just one point, with three games remaining, whilst Sussex’s win against Derbyshire saw them take advantage of our stalemate and pull 19 points clear of the chasing pack.
We remain in second place in the table, still in the promotion spots, with things very much in our own hands as it stands.
The Second Division table, ahead of tomorrow’s game looks as follows:
| TEAM | P | W | T | L | D | A | BAT | BOWL | ADJ | PTS |
| SUSSEX | 11 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 29 | 31 | -3 | 177 |
| MIDDLESEX | 11 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 21 | 25 | 0 | 158 |
| YORKSHIRE | 11 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 30 | 31 | 0 | 157 |
| LEICESTERSHIRE | 11 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 0 | 27 | 24 | 0 | 139 |
| GLAMORGAN | 11 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 19 | 26 | 0 | 125 |
| GLOUCESTERSHIRE | 11 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 25 | 22 | -8 | 119 |
| NORTHAMPTONSHIRE | 11 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 0 | 19 | 28 | 0 | 111 |
| DERBYSHIRE | 11 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 19 | 22 | -1 | 104 |
It’s another round with the Kookaburra ball this week - the final week of the trial, with Sussex again enjoying home conditions, when they take on Glamorgan in Hove, hoping that they’ll be able to use that to their advantage to take another step towards securing promotion for themselves, whilst Yorkshire travel to Leicestershire, a side not out of the promotion race themselves, sitting in fourth place in the table, just 18 points behind their opponents this week.
Our return to Lord’s puts us more in control of home conditions this week, and we’ll be hopeful that the ground-staff at the Home of Cricket can produce a result wicket, unlike last week when we endured four days on a flat hybrid deck at Headingley.
This week’s opponents Gloucestershire created most of the headlines last week, although for all the wrong reasons, as their game against Northamptonshire was abandoned by the umpires on the opening day, as the Bristol pitch was deemed unsafe to play on.
Gloucestershire batted first in torrid conditions and were dismissed inside 37 overs for just 125, before Northamptonshire’s Ricardo Vasconcelos, in equally tricky batting conditions, was forced to retire hurt at the end of the 13th over of the visitors' reply after being struck painfully on the left hand by Ajeet Singh Dale. A further blow to Rob Keogh in the 30th over saw the umpires come together and call a halt to proceedings, deeming the pitch too dangerous to continue the game.
The game ended in a draw, with Gloucestershire docked eight points for producing a sub-standard pitch, leaving them in sixth place in the table, with just one win to their name this season.
Looking at this week's clash, On the run scoring front, Middlesex and Gloucestershire seem pretty well-matched going into this one, with the Seaxes shading things. To this point of the season, Gloucestershire have been reliant on the run-scoring of James Bracey, who leads the way on 973 runs at an average of 74.84. He has been backed up by Cameron Bancroft (792 at 52.80), Ben Charlesworth (711 at 54.69) and Miles Hammond (700 at 43.75).
In comparison, Middlesex’s leading run-scorer remains Ryan Higgins, with 1,063 runs at 88.58, with Leus du Plooy (886 at 59.06), Max Holden (773 at 48.31) and Sam Robson (709 at 64.45). Higgins sits as the second highest runs scorer in the country in both divisions, just nine runs behind Glamorgan’s Colin Ingram who is leading the pack.
With the ball, again it’s Middlesex that shade things, with Toby Roland-Jones leading the way for both sides, currently sat on 37 wickets and the third highest wicket taker in Division Two this year. He’s had good support from the rest of his seam attack, with each of Ethan Bamber (26), Tom Helm (24), Henry Brookes (21) and Higgins (20) all over the twenty-wicket mark.
For Gloucestershire, it’s been Marchant de Lange who has led the way, with 30 wickets, although he’s some way ahead of the others, with Dale (19), Beau Webster (16) and Zaman Akhter (15) trailing behind.
The last time the two sides met was at the end of April down in Bristol, where the points were shared in a drawn affair.
In that game, de Lange was rampant in the first innings, taking 6 for 49 as Middlesex were dismissed for just 203 in 59.5 overs. In reply Gloucestershire posted 322, with Hammond (81) and Graeme van Buuren (75) doing most of the damage, as Helm and Brookes both picked up three wicket hauls for Middlesex.
Middlesex rallied in the second innings, hitting 449 before declaring to set up an outside chance of a win. Holden (111), Higgins (155) and Stephen Eskinazi (65*) set up the chance, although Gloucestershire were resolute in their fourth innings, finishing on 127 for 3 to hold out for the draw.
Whatever happens over the next four days, at the end of it we’ll be a lot closer to knowing which sides are closing in on promotion, and Middlesex will be hoping that it's us that come away from Lord’s with a win and take that significant step towards the top-flight of the Championship in 2025.
Our fourteen-man squad for this week’s game is as follows:
Remember, if you can’t attend the game in person, then the best way to follow the action is by tuning in to our live stream of the game, available on the Middlesex website in the match centre, or direct on the Club’s YouTube channel.
Our live stream is brought to you in partnership with Dafabet - the Club’s Principal Sponsor.
Middlesex
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