There are few more dispiriting sights in cricket – no, sport – than hands being shaken and a draw being declared before 5pm on the fourth day of a County Championship match. When that handshake is the curtain call to a day that yielded only five well-spread wickets it is disheartening to the point of being demoralising.
The pitch was so devoid of life it did not support any of the game’s arts – easy to survive but not to score, hard on the spinners but tougher on the seamers.
The day was not completely without merit for Worcestershire. They could not win – through little fault of their own – a match they were never behind inbut the 12 points earned are enough to send them above both Hampshire and Nottinghamshire.
Moeen Ali’s 22 overs on Wednesday will have brought cheer to his club but especially his country; he was as tidy as ever, with barely a half-tracker or full toss and seldom a half-volley.
Credit must go to Middlesex’s batsmen as they averted a disaster that could have followed Paul Stirling’s dismissal to the second ball of Moeen’s second over of the day, a classic off-break scooting through a wildly unlatched gate to take middle.
But in sharing 103, Joe Burns and James Franklin took Middlesex to the point of safety. Burns was in wonderfully wristy form, moving from 45 to 51 with flicks to third man, then depositing Saeed Ajmal’s second ball of the day into the sightscreen for six and his sixth through cover. He fell on the stroke of lunch 13 short of his century, hooking Jack Shantry to deep square-leg.
Franklin took 47 deliveries to register a boundary but pushed on – driving as handsomely as ever – against the new ball, which was taken immediately after lunch.
John Simpson unwisely attempted to cut a ball that was too full and too straight and played on to Joe Leach. Two Leach overs later Ollie Rayner was trapped plum in front. From there Franklin and James Harris also shared 103 in a 21-over procession until Franklin declared, nine short of becoming the first Middlesex captain to score two centuries in a Championship match since Ben Hutton in 2004.
Franklin provided a pithy summation: “You put personal milestones to one side. I wanted to get the over-rate up and get out of here.”
Before they could do that, Worcestershire were subjected to 13 overs of Middlesex fixing their abject over-rate. Stirling, Nick Compton and, most entertainingly, Sam Robson – who bowled four times as many deliveries as he faced in this match – all turned their arm over.
After Richard Oliver was caught at leg-slip Moeen carted Robson – whose spin is delivered with an action that makes Shantry look like a devotee of the MCC coaching manual – to leg for four then six. Finally the handshake arrived.
