Ollie 4

By Rogers and Out
June 5 2019

It would have been an injustice if Sussex, who had completely dominated the game up until this last day, had failed to secure the victory, but Jimmy Harris, John Simpson and Ollie Rayner produced gritty performances that came close to saving the day. Despite a battling effort by the lower order, Middlesex succumbed to their second County Championship defeat of the season, both of which have been at Lord's.

We resumed play this morning in bright conditions and batting appeared considerably easier than it had on the previous gloomy day.

Although Oliver Robinson ended up with seven wickets, he was not at his best in the first two sessions, bowling several no balls as he strained to add to his overnight tally of four scalps.

Harris guided Wiese past the slips to bring up the Middlesex one hundred in the 38th over, and Gubbo pushed a single from the next over by Jordan to register our first fifty partnership of the match.

However, Gubbins perished soon after when he left a Wiese delivery that appeared to jag inwards and he was adjudged to be leg before for 33.

We took lunch on 133/5 with Simmo joining Harry at the crease. Just after the break, Harry managed to survive a hostile over from Robinson when he very nearly played on to his stumps. He required treatment from the physio after this delivery, as he did later when turning into a rib tickler from Jordan.

Nevertheless, we managed to make it through to tea without losing any further wickets on 212/5, with Harry on 80 and Simmo 45.

Sussex had taken the new ball just before tea and the pacey Hamza soon struck, eliciting an edge from the courageous Harris which was taken behind by Brown. 212/6 with Toby next man in.

TR-J played several decent shots to the boundary and Simmo notched a fine half century. But Robinson was also a more dangerous prospect with the new ball and he re-arranged Ro-Jo's stumps when he'd made 17. 

At 245/7 we looked dead and buried, but some sensible batting by Ollie and Simmo kept us hoping. Their partnership reached 43, when Robinson found the edge of Simmo's bat and Jordan took the catch in the slips. Simmo made 76 and we were 288/8.

It was going to be a massive ask for Ethan Bamber and Tim Murtagh to survive against good quick bowling, and it was no surprise when Robinson and Hamza dispatched them for the addition of five runs leaving Sussex the winners by an innings and fifty runs at 5.45 with 76 balls left 

Ollie Rayner produced his best effort with the bat for some time with his unbeaten 28 but Robinson took the spoils with terrific figures of 7/98 from 35 overs.

This result leaves us languishing in seventh place,  27 points behind Lancashire in third place, who have played one game less than us.

Our prospects of achieving a promotion place are receding and although the teams that have beaten us so far (Lancashire and Sussex) are good sides, our inability to produce a decent first innings score is not good enough. We are in desperate need of a batsman, such as an Andrew Strauss or a Chris Rogers, who can regularly clock up large quantities of runs. Too many of our batsmen are out of form, and those that aren't do not consistently produce match winning scores.

Our bowling is also far too reliant on Tim Murtagh. Poor Toby looks a pale shadow of his former self and with injury concerns over Finny and Tom Helm (to a lesser extent), our once formidable attack is currently somewhat threadbare.

Whilst Stuart Law has certainly improved our white ball cricket as shown in the 50 over competition, I think he is going to need more than one season to sort out the red ball situation and so promotion may well have to wait until next year unless we rapidly improve performances across the board.