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Gubbins keeps Middlesex dream alive
- Updated: September 7, 2016
Nottinghamshire 241 (Patel 100, Finn 4-54) and 24-0 lead Middlesex 247 (Gubbins 75, Ball 5-66) by 18 runsScorecard
It was more constrictor than cobra, more glacier than waterfall but, if Middlesex do go on to win the County Championship title this season, they may look back on Nick Gubbins’ innings here as a key contribution.
With Yorkshire passing 400 at Leeds and Middlesex reeling at 81 for 5, this could have been the day their title challenge fell away. But through Gubbins’ skill and determination, they will resume on day three with the match in the balance and their first Championship title since 1993 still attainable.
Gubbins has already contributed heavily this season. With more than 1,110 Championship runs at an average over 60, he is not only his club’s highest run-scorer, but the fourth highest in the top division. He has played four fewer innings than all above him.
But many of those runs have been scored on the slow and flat – the painfully slow and flat – surface at Lord’s. And while Angus Fraser, Middlesex’s director of cricket, reasons that such surfaces may benefit his team in the long-term (“they give batsmen confidence and teach bowlers the value of control,” he suggests), they can also inflate the records of some of those playing there.
Here, though, in conditions where the ball moved all day for the seamers and on a slow, used surface that provided assistance to two spinners with international wickets to their name, he was forced to prove his quality in far less benign circumstances. And, after an opening over hat-trick on the first evening, he did it under the pressure of knowing his team needed him more than ever.
It was, as he admitted himself, “a bit of a grind” at times. He went, at one stage, 38 overs without a boundary and 80 deliveries over the accumulation of five runs. His share of the stand of 42 with Stevie Eskinazi was just five and his half-century took 187 balls.
But it was, in its way, compelling viewing. Forced to play straight and wait for the poor ball – and Nottinghamshire made him wait a long time – he refused to be drawn into …
