Yesterday saw the final of the Metro Bank One Day Cup at Trent Bridge. The two sides contesting the trophy were Middlesex and Leicestershire. This post looks back at a splendid match.
THE MIDDLESEX INNINGS
Leicestershire began well, reducing Middlesex to 71-5, with all five batters falling to catches by wicket keeper Ben Cox. At that juncture Harry Duke, once of Yorkshire, joined Ryan Higgins, in his second spell at Middlesex after a few years at Gloucestershire in the middle. The pair added 135 together before Duke fell to a catch by Stevie Eskinazi off Ian Holland. Tom Helm managed seven before being pinned LBW by Rehan Ahmed, the first and as it turned out only batter to be out other than caught in the entire innings. This was Ahmed’s second scalp, the first coming when Luke Hollman edged a googly through to Cox, one of the five early dismissals referred to above. Higgins completed an excellent century, and was then immediately out, caught by Nick Kelly off Holland to make it 224-8. That was Holland’s fourth scalp, and not long later he made it a five-for when he had Toby Roland-Jones caught by Ben Green. Holland incidentally is one of the few USians to be involved in high level professional cricket (Tara Norris in the women’s game is another). GThe innings ended at 231 when number 11 Naavya Sharma, unlikely to be moving up the order any time soon, gave Eskinazi a catch off Ahmed for the leg spinner’s third scalp of the innings. Ian Holland had 10-1-36-5, Rehan Ahmed 9.5.-1-55-3 and Tom Scriven 9-0-39-2. While not a huge total 231 was lot better than had seemed likely at 71-5, and it was clear that Leicestershire would need their wits about them to succeed in the chase.
THE LEICESTERSHIRE INNINGS
Leicestershire needed 232 to win, Middlesex needed 10 wickets, since there was no way Leicestershire would be short of the target if they batted for 50 overs. This innings soon boiled down to a contest between the Middlesex bowlers and Nick Kelly, who played a superb innings but did not get anything like sufficient support from the rest of the order. Veteran medium pacer Toby Roland-Jones bowled his full 10 over allocation early in the innings and captured 3-27. At 175-6 with Ben Green, who has a List A 150 to his name providing Kelly with staunch support Leicestershire were still in contention. It was at that point that Tom Helm, who would surely have played for England but for a miserable history of injuries, made his considerable presence felt. First he had Green caught by Josh de Caires to make it 175-7, and then after Nick Kelly and Tom Scriven had advanced the score by a further 13 he virtually settled the issue by having Nick Kelly caught by fellow centurion Higgins for 103. That left Leicestershire needing 44 to win and only bowlers to get them (Scriven is a capable lower order batter when he has someone to support but it would have been asking a lot for him to mastermind this chase on a tough pitch). Ajaz Patel got to 7, including one four, before he became the third victim of an immaculate display of death bowling by Helm, going to a catch by Zafar Gohar. Three balls later, with the score at 200, Scriven was last out, caught by Surrey reject and now Middlesex skipper Ben Geddes off Sharma for 10. Middlesex had won by 31 runs, and the difference had been that Higgins (whose 100, 0-41 from eight overs of medium pace and two catches got him Player of the Match) had real support from Harry Duke, whereas Leicestershire’s centurion, Kelly, was playing a lone hand – the next highest score of the innings was 16 by Rishi Patel, while the most balls negotiated by anyone save Kelly (107) was the 25 faced by Ben Green. Scorecard here.
PHOTOGRAPHS
My usual sign off…
