This was a game that will be remembered for its records rather than its outcome. Once the sides achieved near parity on first innings and the pitch increasingly became the batsman’s friend, it would take a remarkable turnaround in fortune for a result other than the inevitable draw.
No such change happened, and the final day finished with Jonathan Trott keeping wicket, the wicketkeeper Tim Ambrose bowling and dismissing Adam Voges with the last ball of the game, and all 11 Warwickshire players having had a bowl.
Middlesex had batted throughout to the noise of hammering from the building site that is the old Warner stand, scoring 304 for six before Voges holed out for 92, trying to heave the ball into the Tavern stand, and stumps were pulled for the final time. Warwickshire tried everything and anything in terms of bowling changes and fancy field settings to flog something from the surface, to little avail. Middlesex take 12 points from the game and Warwickshire 11.
Sam Robson will remember the game fondly though, as a timely reminder that the prolific run-scoring that hustled him into the England side a couple of years ago has not deserted him. If his brief Test career was marked by indecision and rigidity at the crease, he was composed here, presenting the full face of the bat rather than looking for angles with half a bat as so many seem to. He looks tighter in technique and more in control. If his 231 in the first innings was indication enough, then he followed up with 106 second time around before he was stumped off the bowling of Jeetan Patel deep into the afternoon. It was an innings of milestones for a Middlesex player. When he had 89, it took him to a match total of 320, surpassing AE Stoddart as the most scored in a match at Lord’s for the county, a record that has stood for 123 years.
Stoddart, it is said, once made 485 just up the road for Hampstead, having spent the previous night first dancing, then playing cards until dawn broke. Then, having batted almost through the entire innings of 813, he played tennis, went to the theatre and didn’t go to bed until three in the morning. A pint and a meal in the Tavern was enough for Robson.
The record for the most runs scored for Middlesex in a championship match was there for the taking too. In 1949, Jack Robertson, a fine, elegant opener, made an unbeaten 331 against Worcestershire at New Road, his only innings of the match in which, as here, a Compton was playing (although it was the wicketkeeper, Leslie, rather than his more esteemed brother, Denis).
Forty-seven years on, against Somerset, on what, judging by the scores, was a flat pitch at Uxbridge, another opener, Paul Weekes, produced scores of 171 not out and 160, to match Robertson’s achievement. Robson has now raised the bar to 337, runs for which he batted almost 13 hours, faced 540 deliveries, and hit 42 fours and a six. And not a quickstep in sight.
