We expected it to be gritty and gritty it was. Grittier than the Snake Pass on an icy midwinter morning, or an egg sandwich on a windblown beach. Nick Gubbins was so gritty that come the close of play he would have needed a couple of hours sluicing with cold water like newly gathered Brancaster mussels.
For five and a half hours and 242 deliveries, Gubbins, at the fag end now of a prolific season that has propelled him to the fringes of the England team, was the belt and braces that prevented the trousers of the Middlesex innings falling around the ankles. His unbeaten 120 was his fourth, and, given the context and what was at stake, his most significant century of the summer, underpinning Middlesex’s 208 for five, made from 82 overs before bad light prevented further play.
It was never going to be an easy day for batting and there was no surprise in Yorkshire exercising their right to do away with the toss and put Middlesex in. There was low cloud cover and a hint of mizzle in the air. The pitch, near the middle of a tired-looking square, was, so reports said, a little greener than it looked. All day it offered just a little to the battery of seamers, five of them, fielded by Yorkshire: a hint of swing – more so with the second new ball now that the dampness had gone from the atmosphere – a little off the seam, a touch two-paced so that some deliveries, generally back of a length, stuck in it. Others skidded through nicely, and there was what looked like a little reverse swing for Tim Bresnan in an impressive spell from the Pavilion end.
So it would be wrong to say that this was one of Gubbins’s more fluent innings. The Yorkshire cause was not helped by the inability of the fielders to catch the ball. Three chances, or perhaps four (did Andy Hodd, behind the stumps, miss one off Azeem Rafiq’s off-spin? His reaction suggested as much) were spilt, one of them offered by the centurion when on 22. Later, shortly before he short‑armed Ryan Sidebottom into the Grand Stand for six to reach three figures, he also survived what proved to be a thin edge down the leg side from the same bowler. It was telling that all five Yorkshire wickets came unassisted by any fielder.
For all that, though, there was the sort of fluency in Gubbins’s movement, that synchronising of eye, thought and footwork, that comes automatically to one who has spent hours at the crease and is in the form of his life. He stands tall and still, and if his initial backlift goes towards the slip cordon, then it is straight enough when it comes down. He plays late, is efficient square of the wicket, and plays nicely through the onside. One early boundary, clipped through midwicket almost from the top of the bounce, was the shot of the day.
Crucially, for an opening batsman, and especially a left‑hander, he has an awareness of where he is in relation to his off stump, so he leaves the ball well. And, as any good player will do when the ball is moving laterally, he makes an early call on the line to play and holds to it rather than watching the movement and playing at it away from his body. His bat was passed numerous times, particularly by Bresnan, taking the ball down the slope. The trick, as he has worked out, is to treat it with insouciance, mentally draw a line (or even, as Alastair Cook does, a physical one) and move on.
For a while it appeared that the pacemen might cut a swathe through the Middlesex innings. Jack Brooks, a pugilistic bowler who swaps punches in pursuit of wickets, had removed Sam Robson without score, and Nick Compton, lbw misjudging the line and playing no shot at something that just held sufficiently up the slope. David Willey, preferred to Liam Plunkett in the hope that he might exploit the overhead conditions, then forced Dawid Malan, dropped by Adam Lyth at second slip, to drag on to his stumps – an indication of the two-paced nature of the pitch. When Brooks returned later to similarly remove Stevie Eskinazi, Middlesex were 97 for four and in trouble.
Gubbins had already been missed at backward point, a lacerating cut that Rafiq did well even to parry, but now added 57 for the fifth wicket with John Simpson before the wicketkeeper went to the deserving Bresnan, in the same way as Compton, pretty much giving himself out in the process. By the close, though, with the second new ball just taken, Gubbins, awarded his county cap during the lunch interval by the Middlesex president Harry Latchman, had added 54 with James Franklin, who himself had been missed at third slip by Gary Ballance. Overall, given the conditions, and Yorkshire’s lacklustre performance in the field, this was Middlesex’s, or at least Gubbins’s, day.
