Middlesex till we die - Middlesex Mauled by Bears

Middlesex Mauled by Bears

A mauling

By Diamond Ruled OK July 19 2008
Diamond was one of the few loyal fans who endured a poor day and dire performance by Middlesex. There was perambulation, talk of EGM. However, sadly the events on the field fill the crux of this report which carries a MTWD health warning. Read on if your brave enough.

Preamble.

Heavy cloud and light rain greeted me to Uxbridge as I got off the bus at the station. The walk up to the ground saw the rain cease and the cloud start to break up. No covers on the wickets and Warwickshire on the field going through their drills said an on time start would be made, no early saviour for Middlesex from the weather then. The few hardy (or foolish, dependant on how you look at being 20-0 at the start of day four, following on) souls on the ground saw play start at 11o’clock in a brisk westerly wind which could still move a weather front in to save the day. Much of the chatter around the ground was not of the team’s rather poor performance in the game so far but of the cancellation of the EGM and the relevant cost to the club.

The play.

I could put a lot of effort into reporting the half days play I witnessed at length giving the ins and outs (and there were 10 of those) but if you were there you saw what I did, a pretty abject performance. If you weren’t there (and many of you weren’t) then let me just go over the bare bones for you. The batting was poor, too many wafts of the bat finding fielders, too little application to the task in hand with one or two exceptions namely TSO’s 44 and Richos dogged resistance against his old team mates towards the end. The stand out moment of the day was Troughton’s catch to dismiss TSO.A good shot square was brilliantly plucked from the air by the fielder as though he had a time machine. This gave Woakes his fourth of five wickets in the innings, his fifth being when he clean bowled Finn and then ASBO to end proceedings on 167 all out handing Middlesex a lose by an innings and then some.

Conclusion.

The weather cleared up markedly as the game finished but the wind Twas still blowing from the West as the points headed up North. Let’s hope this is our mid season blip , Warwickshire by winning have pulled away from the rest of the division so unless they slip up against someone else we are chasing with the rest for one promotion place .

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