The winning shot

By Leprechaun
July 1 2015

London Leprechaun tells us about the short fourth day of the Hampshire match. In between the cricket we get shopping reports, news of the scoreboard and of course that dreaded over rate.  And on a very hot day lots of fans are needed of course. 

In the spirit of previous reports on this match I feel the need to start with a shopping report. First task is some water from the station kiosk . The short walk to the station convinced me that extra supplies will be needed on this already fantastically warm day. Second task was to see if I could find one of those little fans (no not mini Middlesex supporters) but those battery things that work for a while until a blade gets squashed. Could be very useful today. As the station kiosk did not have them I tried one in Oxford Street and found one in Superdrug, which is next to Boots. I wonder whose idea it was to put their pharmacy next door to the existing one. Maybe they had a fantasy they could drive out the competition.

So with that all done I arrive at Lords in plenty of time to see the scoreboard showing Middlesex at 300/7 against Notts. Maybe there is a phantom match going on. Fortunately it gets the right match on the board before the start. Which is good for the human fans in the ground. There is a reasonable sprinkling of mainly regulars at the ground with, amazingly for Middlesex a spirit of optimism about the day. There are even one or two very oiptimistic about our visit to Trent Bridge next week.  The only damper is the big glowing red 0 on the over rate. Well done Don on sorting it out overnight but everyone is till nervously watching it as we start bowling. Can it stay at 0. Though to be fair everyone is hurrying between the overs and there is little messing about with field placings etc.

Early on the pitch looks benign in the sun and Hampshire don’t look in great trouble. It took the introduction of TRJ (held back because of the over rate?) to get the first breakthrough helped by a fantabulous catch from Ollie Rayner.  Murts then got the vital wicket of Gareth Berg with a decision that would probably have ben an umpires call on DRS, and then James Harris, switching to the Nursery End got clouted for one enormous six into the Grandstand and then got a clear LBW (obvious even from the Grandstand.)  But guess what: the red 0 had become a minus 1.  We probably can get that back but it takes the gloss of a solid 45 minutes bowling.

So at noon we need 74 to win. It would be fanciful to think Hampshire could win but they did the only thing possible, which was to attack with a fantail of slips. The Middlesex dilemma was whether to try and get the runs by lunch or not take any risks. After all we might need the lunch interval for Don to fix the you know what.

Bird was bowling at a decent pace but there was some lusty hitting from both openers and a couple of edges, which got us to halfway by 12.30.  This prompted some discussion about whether the lunch time could be flexible.  Things looked less likely to be over quickly when the ice man came on, bowled beautifully and took out Stirlo’s off stump. But a few edges, a clumping pull from Robbo and a few slightly dodgy runs took us to 11 needed at 1pm. At which point, fantastically, common sense prevailed and a little known opportunity for umoires to use their discretion meant that we could play another four overs, or seventeen minutes to try and finish the match.

We'll get them in byes

But we still needed a bit of tension. Since neither Compo or Robson had any intention of getting out we crept to the 11 runs. With two overs to go and five runs needed Compo looked determined to play out a maiden. Maybe he fancied the lunch menu. However of the last ball he managed to play a vague kind of shot to a ball that beat everyone for four byes and the scores were level.  Please Robbo don’t play out this over as a maiden. After three fairly painful balls he finally managed a drive for four to everyone’s delight and relief.

It had been a solid, professional morning and we left Lords to the strains of the Middlesex victory song drifting out from the open doors of the dressing room. They certainly won’t win any fans for their singing.

Positives:

James Harris on the verge of 50 wickets

Sam Robson getting some time in the middle and looking more confident

Steve Finn wandering round the ground and in the Ashes squad

Negative:

The sight of Don rushing round to the umpires room to talk over rates with Messrs Cook and Hartley and try and get us out of a jam again.