Lancashire hold edge as wickets tumble

Lancashire 123 for 4 (Murtagh 3-21) trail Middlesex 180 (Simpson 53*, Clark 3-36, Mahmood 3-63) by 57 runs
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It took barely an hour for the gentle intimacies of county cricket to enfold a sunlit Trafalgar Road on the first morning of this game; it took even less time for the rest of the world to be put aside. In a far-away city a government fell… or perhaps it was propped up. At Southport four Middlesex wickets certainly tumbled in a shade over ninety minutes, all of them accompanied by affluent chuckles and the clinking of glasses from the hospitality tents.

By the time an early tea was taken the other six visiting batsmen had been removed and an auctioneer, slurred of voice but earnest of purpose, was inviting bids for desirable items, none of which included tickets for Monday’s cricket. Such vouchers appeared of even less value three balls into Lancashire’s reply when both Alex Davies and Liam Livingstone had been caught behind off Tim Murtagh for nought, but by the close two fine short innings, the first by Haseeb Hameed, the second by Shivnarine Chanderpaul, had shepherded Lancashire to 123 for 4, a deficit of only 57 runs. In the bars and marquees affairs of state had long been replaced as a topic of conversation by the state of the game and Chanderpaul’s ability to withdraw his bat inside the line of the ball in the manner of a close-up magician.

The relative calm of the long evening session was in contrast to a morning in which Middlesex’s hopes of justifying James Franklin’s decision to bat first seemed to rest on the substantial shoulders of Paul Stirling, whose 72-ball innings of 49 helped his team recover from the toils of 38 for 3. Stirling hits the slightly loose ball very hard and downright tripe with quite unreasonable force. He is a batsman built by the same firm that constructed Mike Gatting and he feeds equally greedily on long hops, if not other sweetmeats.

Stirling’s thunderous pulls off the bowling of Tom Bailey and Saqib Mahmood left fielders with the tasks of locating and retrieving the ball, a task made impossible when he whacked Mahmood over the fence and perhaps on to the railway line. Middlesex’s score had risen to 143 when Stirling became one of three visiting batsmen to be caught down the leg side, a quiddity which gave Davies three of his six catches and also suggested that the visitors had been a trifle unlucky.

Such resistance as Stirling offered was particularly valuable to Middlesex, given the pain of their early reverses. These began when Nick Gubbins was caught down leg for a single in the sixth over of the innings. They became even more wounding, first when Sam Robson played too far from his body at a ball from Bailey, thus edging another catch to Davies, and then two overs later when Dawid Malan obligingly hooked the same bowler straight to Chanderpaul at long leg. It could have been even worse for Middlesex had any of Bailey’s confident leg-before appeals been upheld, but Steve O’Shaughnessy turned them down and promptly entered into the burgeoning good humour of things by indicating to some spectators on the railway side of the ground why he had done so.

That Middlesex eventually reached 180 was explained by the classically correct batting of John Simpson, whose 121-minute 53 not out was probably the best innings of the day. Almost exactly a decade ago Simpson made an unbeaten 112 for Ormskirk against the local club on this ground. In those days his dietary concerns were such that he was wont to carry a small plastic bag of fruit around with him, as if making it clear that he was placing professional preparation far above appearances or the mockery of team mates. Now Simpson is perhaps the most underestimated wicketkeeper-batsman in the county game, a slim parcel of resistance who invariably punches far above spectators’ expectations. Although he could only watch from the other end as Jordan Clark took three of the last four wickets, Simpson could at least be reassured that he had given his team some sort of total at which to bowl.

Murtagh’s early breakthroughs made that score seem even more substantial and there was discussion among the greybeards in the pavilion as to whether we would see Middlesex bat again on the first evening. Some cited Lancashire’s limp batting in their ten-wicket defeat to Yorkshire as evidence we might. As it turned out, we never came near to such drama. Hameed batted with all the poise and self-possession we saw last summer, albeit that he made only 18, and he was as unlucky as his opponents to be strangled down the leg side, James Harris taking the wicket. Steven Croft, in his more rough-hewn style, also batted effectively for 31 before he drove Murtagh straight to mid-off where Ravi Patel took a good catch.

But the last hour belonged to Chanderpaul, who was 32 not out at the close, and to Dane Vilas, both of whom played with increasing comfort as the sun became little more than haze. There is rain forecast for the second day of this game but folk in these parts might spend this evening humming Elsie Carlisle’s 1932 number, “The Clouds Will Soon Roll By”. It is what all manner of clouds tend to do in Birkdale.

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Source: ESPN Crickinfo