Durham match report

After the earliest start to a county season on record, it was perhaps inevitable that one of the first few games would fall victim to the weather, and this game against Durham proved to be that. While it looked at one stage that Durham were certs to win it, and even for a brief few moments that Middlesex were going to snatch it, the weather, which put paid to the first day as well as large spells of the second and fourth meant that the spoils were indeed shared on the final afternoon. I must admit that when Onions had ripped through us once more on the final morning that I'd given up on the game and had gone off to do something else, so was pleasantly surprised to see that somehow Simpson and The-Lambeth-Lara (C) had put together a partnership, and with rain falling, apparently saved the draw. Thinking nothing of it until much later on that evening, where upon I checked my Twitter, imagine my amazement to see that with Durham needing 130 to win, a) they'd managed to get back on, and b) Middlesex nearly won it!

Anyway, on with the match itself, and again we failed (twice) with the bat. With Strauss coming in for Rayner, there were thoughts that this extra bat would help bolster the lineup and make us less prone to collapse, but at 2-3, and 28-4, this certainly was not the case. The England captain himself managed to bag a second ball duck when Onions bowled him through the gate, and it didn't get much better from there. Admittedly it is tough to bat at this time of the year, and we're hardly the only county to have struggled when batting, but it might be nice to eventually score a few runs. 188 all out, which was with a bit of late-order resistance (as usual) meant no bonus points, which is again disappointing.

One bright spark was Neil Dexter. After just 16 runs in the first two games, Dex stepped back from his role of captaincy, and went and made a gutsy 65 in very tough conditions on Friday afternoon. It may not have been the Dexter of old, but hopefully the confidence given to him by those runs will see him get back to the batsman that we all know very soon. John Simpson's display as well was very encouraging - after a few failures from him he was due some scores, and an impressive 25 not out first up was joined by a backs-against-the-wall 47 when all seemed lost on the final afternoon. Simmo is an excellent bat, and seeing as there isn't anyone with any experience lining up to replace him, it's important that the keeper does start to contribute, which he has started to here.

Action shot of Tim Murtagh batting...



If I was to sum up the bowling effort, it would be that they started badly, turned it around, and then let it slip right at the end. After Finn and Murtagh bowled a pile of junk just before lunch on Day 3, allowing Durham to race out of the blocks, they got their acts together after the interval in one of the weirdest sessions of county cricket I've ever seen. Durham added 165 runs, but lost 6 wickets, in a session that certainly got the game moving. The post new ball figthtback has been something we've seen in all three games, which does show good fight, but in all three games it's allowed the opposition to get off to a great start with the bat. Suppiah and Trescothick smashed Murtagh and Collymore around Taunton, Davies and Rudolph put on 85 for Surrey, and Smith and Di Venuto helped themselves as Finn and Murtagh chucked up a lot of freebies on Saturday morning. (Although Finn did make me look pretty stupid when I was commentating on BBC London...) It was very poor cricket, and I'm sure Gus and Richard Johnson will be working hard to ensure that that's the last of it in terms of wasting the new ball. In Division One you can't afford to give teams any advantage, and to waste the new ball (which as we've seen in the excellent spells of Philander and Onions is the best time to strike) is criminal at this level - another harsh lesson learnt. However, the fightback was encouraging, and to peg Durham back to 194-9 shows the character of this side when many others would have let their heads drop. (Although the record 10th wicket partnership between Borthwick and Onions was not ideal...)

So another game gone, and a draw with Durham is certainly not the worst result in the world - a result that many Middlesex fans (myself included) would have taken before proceedings got underway. And a result that everyone would have taken when 8 down just after lunch with Durham sniffing victory! The boys have a week off now, which means they'll be dodging rain clouds on the golf course, and I have a few exams, so that'll probably be the last you hear from me until the Worcestershire game. Come on the Middle!

Squad named for Durham game...

... and interestingly, after this news earlier this afternoon, Neil Dexter's been named in the squad (which makes my assumption that he wouldn't be look very foolish, and confirms that I know absolutely nothing about what's really going on at Middlesex!).

The 13 man squad itself is:

Chris Rogers (c)
Gareth Berg
Steven Crook
Joe Denly
Neil Dexter
Steven Finn
Dawid Malan
Tim Murtagh
Ollie Rayner
Sam Robson
Toby Roland-Jones
John Simpson (wk)
Andrew Strauss

Corey Collymore is missing out (as predicted, I had to get something right eventually) as part of the 'rotation policy', but chances are he wouldn't have made the team either way. Gareth Berg has been struggling with a chest infection, so Steven Crook is in as cover for him, but we'll find out tomorrow morning whether he's fit to play.

From what I see, the only selection dilemma is between Neil Dexter and Ollie Rayner. We will go with four seamers (as usual), with either Crook or Berg (fitness depending) joining Murtagh, Roland-Jones and Finn, with Strauss coming into the top order. So the question is whether they go with the extra batsman (Dex) or the spinner (Rayner)?

There's a case for leaving out both. The ball hasn't spun much in this very early part of the season, and seeing as Ollie was only required to bowl six overs against Surrey, it would make sense to strengthen the batting, which has been rather shaky thus far. Conversely, with Dexter having handed over the captaincy, will he be right mentally to suddenly go and make runs? Or would the release of not being required to captain take the pressure of his shoulders and allow him to return to form?

It's a tough one, but I reckon that they'll go with Dexter. Having named him in the squad, they're going to pick him (otherwise they'd have let him slip away and play for the 2nds) so as such he may get a game. Plus, the batting needs all the strength it can get, and as handy as Ollie Rayner is, I think we'd all prefer the safety-net of Dexter at six with Simpson at seven and Berg at 8.

Whatever way Middlesex go, it'll be a tough game, as Durham are a very good team. However, they did lose their only game of the season last week to Notts, and after Sunday morning, we'll have a lot of momentum to take into the game, which will hopefully help us massively. With overcast conditions forecast, and the pitches playing quite tough so far, the toss will be massive, especially considering the damage Durham's formidable bowling attack could do if asked to field first. Hopefully Chris Roger's tossing (careful) will be better than Dexy's (0 from 2 this year) and he can help Middlesex to a second win in a row. Come on the Middle!

Dexter stands down as captain

Clicked onto the Middlesex website this morning and was shocked to see this piece of news. While there were a few rumblings about Dexy's captaincy, I don't think anyone really saw him standing down now coming.

First - to clarify what the news is. Dexy is to take a break from four-day captaincy to focus on his batting. He still remains as club captain (so would captain any 40 over or T20 games) but for the time being Chris Rogers is taking over as captain of the four-day team.

Am not sure if Neil is going to actually be in the team for the next couple of week / tomorrow, but the fact that this news has come out suggests that he won't be in the team. Sadly, his batting form (as I alluded to in the last blog) just hasn't been up to it at the back end of last year or in the start of this, and either Neil has decided, or it's been decided for him, that he isn't justifying his place in the team, so he's likely to miss out (though that will be confirmed or not when the squad for tomorrow is announced).

It's a shame for Neil that things have got to this, especially after what I thought was a brilliant game as skipper last week. Gus Fraser even mentioned Dexy's tactical astuteness in his review of the game, saying "I thought Neil Dexter captained the team superbly. His tactics on the final morning were excellent. He picked the right time to have the field in and the right time to have fielders saving four. His introduction of Toby Roland-Jones was inspired too. It was Toby who dismissed Rory Hamilton-Brown in his first over", so any issues are clearly down to matters other than his skipper-ship.

In the short term, I would guess that Strauss would come in 'like-for-like' as a batsman for Dexter, although they may decide to go with the structure (6 specialist batsmen, keeper and 4 seamers) that I floated in the last blog, with Adam London / Paul Stirling taking Dex's role.

In the long term however, things could be tough for Dex. Once a captain gives anyone else a go it's tough to recover, and if Bucky does well then he may well get the nod full-time. And if whoever takes Dexy' batting place does well, then it could well be tough to even break into the team, let alone get back as captain.

It will be a time of upheaval for the rest of the boys with the captain suddenly going, so hopefully they can pull together and take the momentum of Sunday morning into the game against Durham.

Squeaky bum time as Middlesex beat Surrey

Wowsers - what a game. What a match, and what a morning - a finish that will live long in the memory of Middlesex fans. With Surrey just one hit away from winning the game, Jade Dernbach lobbed one up in the air, and after a nervous few seconds of waiting, Sam Robson stepped forward from nowhere to claim the catch, and seal the victory for Middlesex, by just three runs.

A massive, massive performance from the team, all the way through the game - a game that was a brilliant advertisement for county cricket. Played on a sporting pitch that offered a bit for both bat and ball (nowhere near as bad as Surrey are making out), there were some high quality performances from both teams throughout, but it was Middlesex who held their nerve to record victory by such a narrow margin. Anyone who was at Lord's this morning will have no doubts that the county game is in rude health at the moment.

Anyway, onto the main talking points from the game - the main one being the pitch. While Adams and Hamilton-Brown do have a point that the pitch did offer a bit to the bowler (and one nameless member of the Middlesex team did tell me that it probably could have done with a little less grass), from watching three days of the game, I don't think that it was an 'unfair' pitch. Given that we're in the second week of April, and that much of the game was played with overcast skies, batting is always going to be tough, and for Surrey to come out and publicly slate it does smack of sour grapes. Both teams have to bat twice on it, and of course, if Hamilton-Brown felt it was going to deteriorate so badly he probably should have elected to bat first when he won the toss. And it was the sort of pitch that if you dig in and stick around, you can make some runs, as Malan, Robson, and Hamilton-Brown all showed. Yes, it was a low scoring game, but it wasn't 33 plays 18.

The ebb and flow of the game was superb, and again, the fight showed by Middlesex was very heartening. After Dernbach ripped through the middle order (who have now failed for a concerning fourth time in a row), Middlesex were 108-6 and in tatters, but a strong rearguard action from the patient and watchful Malan and the #lambethlara (copyright me) Murtagh, plus support from TRJ and Collymore pushed us up to 256, and two important batting points. With every run being crucial, that effort from the tail-end, for the second game in a row, was excellent. And with the ball, when Surrey looked to be on top, somehow we'd find a way of wresting back the initiative, first with Ollie Rayner getting the breakthrough with Rudolph stumped, and then the captain Dexter bringing himself on to bowl and excellent spell and take 3-23. And then of course, when Surrey were four down overnight on Saturday, Middlesex somehow managed to take the final six wickets just in the nick of time and win the game.

On a less positive note, the batting side has failed now for four innings in a row. While the top four of Robson, Denly, Rogers and Malan all seem in good nick, and have made good starts in both games, the form of the lower-middle order is becoming quite worrying. Captain Dex at 5 has made 15 runs from 4 innings so far, John Simpson's made 26, and Gareth Berg has made 20. We've collapsed in all four innings of the season, which is not a good thing at all. Berg and Simpson will both remain in the team due to the other strings to their bow (Bergy for his bowling, Simmo for his keeping), but the question is how long Dex can afford to rely on his captaincy to keep him in the team. With Strauss coming back next week there is a school of thought that Dex should drop out to make way, and looking at his form, both this season and the end of last, you can see why he's vulnerable. However, for my money, dropping the captain would be a foolish move, and you sense Dexy just needs one knock of any note just for a bit of confidence, which he looks like he's desperately lacking at the crease. As a captain this year I think he's been superb - making the right bowling changes at the right time, and getting the fields pretty much bang on (although I probably would have put a midwicket in when Maynard and Hamilton-Brown kept picking up easy singles, and I would also have had a third man in for Dernbach with only four needed and the possibility that an outside edge wins Surrey the game!), but he is in the team primarily as a batsman, so he does need some runs quickly to quieten the naysayers. Century next week please Neil!

So, with Durham starting on Thursday, and Finn and Strauss available, the question is who should they come in for - if at all? Well, if you have players of their class available they should undoubtedly come in, but working out who to drop will be a tough one. There are no obvious candidates for who should miss out, which means Gus will have a bit of a headache trying to piece together the team. Were I in charge, I'd probably drop Ollie Rayner and Corey Collymore - Ollie because we haven't needed a spinner massively in the first two games (Olls only bowled the six overs this game), and with it seaming about he's fairly redundant, so we may as well add the extra batter in Strauss - and Corey, because of it's difficult to drop any of Berg, Murtagh and TRJ, who have all excelled so far, so Corey (who it must be said has also started the season well, but not quite with that spark of the other three seamers) being the unlucky man to make way for Finn.

All of that means I'd rejig the batting order a bit, dropping Robson down to four (which is a shame as he is an excellent opener, but you do have to accommodate the England captain), meaning my team would be:

1) Denly
2) Strauss
3) Rogers
4) Robson
5) Malan
6) Dexter (c)
7) Simpson (wk)
8) Berg
9) Lara
10) Roland-Jones
11) Finn

The extra batsman just gives us that little bit of a safety net after the shakes of the middle order thus far, and that seam quartet is as strong as any that will play county cricket this year. Durham will be a tough ask, but if Middlesex can show the same amount of guts that they did this morning - anything's possible!


And if you weren't lucky enough to have been at Lord's today (or just want to relive it) - here's the highlights from Day 4!