Nottinghamshire’s director of cricket, Mick Newell, defended the timing of his side’s declaration after a defiant lower-order stand between James Harris and Tim Murtagh saw Middlesex cling on to draw their County Championship opener at Lord’s.
Harris and Murtagh held firm for 19.1 overs late on the fourth day to reach 300 for seven by the close, having been set an impossible 519 to win by Chris Read. The Nottinghamshire captain had batted for 25 minutes beyond tea on Tuesday evening for a 76-ball century and Newell had no truck with the call.
“It’s disappointing because wins are hard to come by and we dominated the game but it never crossed our minds to declare at tea,” Newell said. “We didn’t fear defeat. But credit to the way those two batted at the end, they were in no great difficulty and so in April, that was an excellent pitch.”
The Middlesex managing director of cricket, Angus Fraser, praised his pair’s 75 minutes of defiance while revealing that Dawid Malan, who has a broken hand, was padded up and ready to bat if required. “It is great to see that fight in the team,” he said. “We’ve been outplayed for four days but have competed hard and it is something to build on.”
Harry Gurney took three for 69 – including the wickets of Nick Compton and Paul Stirling in successive deliveries – but the visitors were ultimately defeated by a flat Lord’s track that got better as the game progressed.
Frustration looked likely from the outset, with Compton and the opener Nick Gubbins eating up the bulk of the morning only for the latter to fall to the left-arm spin of Samit Patel with three balls to go until the interval, caught at short leg by Riki Wessels for 37.
By that point Compton, playing his first championship match for Middlesex since returning from Somerset during the winter, had already nudged his way to a half century from 140 balls, at one stage going 10 overs without scoring a run off the bat.
Fifty minutes into the afternoon session and Gurney, from the Pavilion end, had his man caught by Wessels at first slip off the glove before repeating the trick to Stirling, this time held by Patel at second.
John Simpson survived the hat-trick but became the fifth to fall, for 11, when, after an hour at the crease he shouldered arms to Jake Ball only for a rising delivery to take the under-edge and crash on to the stumps.
The Middlesex captain Adam Voges had batted serenely for his 72 – little surprise given a winter in which he scored 1,358 runs in the Sheffield Shield at an average of 104 and sees him join the Australia’s Test squad on 16 May. “He has looked in wonderful touch since arriving. We netted at Oxford last week and while others were struggling he middled everything,” Fraser said. “He is in a wonderful run of form so we are going to enjoy him while he is here.”
Voges’ demise, bowled off the inside edge by the returning Gurney, was followed five overs later by the wicket of Tom Helm – trapped lbw by Patel – that sparked the game back into life.
But any resultant pressure soon faded and few nails were bitten amid a mature and composed knock from the 24-year-old Harris, who batted for 131 minutes for an undefeated 120-ball 36. Murtagh was similarly untroubled for his 18, securing eight points for Middlesex to Nottinghamshire’s 10.
