A few harsh lessons learnt

After a month of the four-day stuff, the coloured kits were broken out for the first time this season as Middlesex took on Gloucestershire in the first CB40 game of the season, and as it happened, it was live on Sky. Sadly, it was quite comfortably Middlesex's worst performance of the season, almost from start to finish, as the Gloucs Gladiators ran out victors by 5 wickets.




After rain washed out a couple of hours, the match was reduced to 26 overs a side, and after losing yet another toss (that's 5 out of 5 defeats with the coin this year), Middlesex (back under the stewardship of Neil Dexter) were asked once more to bat (that's the 5th time out of 5 that that's happened too). Malan and Denly opened up, and looked fairly confident, but while they put on 45 runs for the first wicket, they never really got going. Wickets fell all too regularly, and no batsman got set, or indeed scored at the rate necessary in a much reduced game. Only Paul Stirling of the top seven scored at over a run a ball, and against Gloucestershire attack that (no offence) didn't look that threatening, that isn't good enough.




Some late order smashing got us up to over 150 from the 26 overs, which looked about par, but would need a good bowling performance to defend it. Sadly, we didn't get it. Murtagh and Collymore opened up, and bowled what can only be described as a load of shite. For reasons that I am yet to understand, Murtagh, who has bowled almost solely from the Nursery End in his Middlesex career, was told to run in from the Pavilion, and vice versa for Corey. Whether that was a hunch or not from cap'n Dexter, it failed spectacularly, with Hamish Marshall cashing in on some lacklustre bowling to set a platform for an easy chase for his team. The bowlers were rotated a fair bit, with 8 of the team getting a go (for trivia fans, the three not required to turn their arms over were Simpson, Malan and Rogers), with part-time being favoured to the specialist bowlers at times, with Gareth Berg only getting one over. It was a very poor effort from Middlesex in the field; they didn't bowl well enough, didn't field as well as Gloucestershire (who saved at least ten runs through athletic fielding) and ultimately, they didn't bat as well as them either. All-round, a very disappointing effort from Middlesex.




On the bright side, this is just the first game, so there is still time to turn it around in the 40 over competition, but the nature of the competition is that only one of the seven in the group (or two if we're lucky) can get through, so we're going to have to bounce back very quickly. Also some positives to take out of the game was the bowling of Ollie Rayner, who was very economical from his six overs and took two wickets, and I thought Steven Crook bowled with pace and hostility on his first outing of the year as the game ebbed away from Middlesex. John Simpson paced his innings very well, after a slow start to gauge conditions he then started to free the arms, and without his quickfire 29, the game could really have been embarrassing.




However, it wasn't a day of many positives, and the Panthers will have to pick themselves up from the defeat and move on quickly. And the first place to move on to is the 4 day game at Nottingham starting tomorrow (Wednesday), for which a 12 man squad has been announced:




Chris Rogers (c)

Gareth Berg

Corey Collymore

Joe Denly

Neil Dexter

Steven Finn

Dawid Malan

Tim Murtagh

Ollie Rayner

Sam Robson

John Simpson

Andrew Strauss







Strauss and Finn are available, for what might be the last time before the test series starts, which is a plus. Toby Roland-Jones is out with a foot injury, which hopefully won't be too serious, and his place will almost certainly be filled by Corey Collymore, who's missed the last two games. Corey's had a very slow start to the season, and will really want to make his mark on a Nottinghamshire team that have begun the season very well. They, like us, will have the England duo of Swann and Broad available, but luckily they're missing Patel and Taylor, who are on England Lions duty.




The pessimists amongst the Middlesex fans who are looking at relegation will note that we already have two of the so-called "four wins needed to stay up", and with three quarters of the season still remaining, another win here would really see us looking up the table, rather than down. Of course, this comes against a Nottinghamshire team full of strength and confidence, but there's enough quality in the Middlesex team too to pull of an upset. The toss at Trent Bridge has been fairly key, with loads of wickets falling on the first day, before it dries out to see runs later on in the game, so hopefully Buck will have been practising his tossing and it will come down on our side. There's a very high chance of rain in the game (90% on one day), but fingers crossed it will all stay dry and allow Middlesex to continue their (championship) unbeaten run.




Come on the Middle!