Came scores half-century on tough first day

Middlesex, trying to close a 15-point gap behind second-placed Yorkshire in the promotion race, utterly dominated an afternoon in Derby where the home side, attempting to overcome their own 19-point deficit to elude a first wooden spoon since 2016, lost six wickets for three runs in 43 balls.

With Toby Roland-Jones returning five for 40 in all, Derbyshire ignominiously sank from 130 for two to an eventual 173. The decline set in when Harry Came fell for 66 as the Middlesex captain extended his recent superb sequence to 36 wickets at 16.92 in six matches.

Led by Mark Stoneman’s rampant, unbeaten 79, Middlesex then romped through the evening, too, reaching 125 for one in reply on the first day of a vital Vitality County Championship meeting for them. No home seamer could match the accuracy and late movement on an occasionally two-paced pitch that meant “TRJ” claimed all his five scalps bowled or LBW.

Belatedly exploiting conditions after Ryan Higgins’s outswing had undone Luis Reecs for 20, he first removed Brooke Guest, missed by Noah Cornwell off his own bowling when three but   out for seven 50 minutes from lunch, which arrived at 99 for two.

Startling carnage then swept in from nowhere from the afternoon’s seventh over. Came lost off stump and, after Wayne Madsen top-edged a cut at Ethan Bamber to first slip to go for 20, Roland-Jones knocked over two more for ducks and a then a third without score once David Lloyd had returned a catch to Bamber for two.

Derisive applause greeted the single that finally took Derbyshire off 133, the score at which the last hapless trio had fallen, and the former England man’s spell ended with 8-5-6-4. It took the 17-year old bowler Harry Moore, in only his third first-class innings, and spinner Jack Morley, on loan from Lancashire, to add 35 for the ninth wicket.

Having resisted 38 balls for one run, Morley unaccountably then leapt out to Luke Hollman’s leg spin and was bowled by his 39^th before Moore miscued a lofted drive to deep mid-on for 32, which brought tea two overs early.

In five of their last eight completed innings, Derbyshire had failed to better their 173 here. But Middlesex were aware at the interval that Yorkshire were doing well in Cardiff and that Sussex, the other side above them, already seemed well set for success in Bristol.

If the obvious task was to make their own advantage now count,  it didn’t help that the second ball of the reply, a half-volley from Zak Chappell, was clipped by Sam Robson low to mid-on. But their response to being one down without a run scored was full-on aggression: a dozen fours had come by the twelfth over.

Chappell, who’d received his county cap in a presentatiom at the start, could celebrate no further as the two left-handers, Stoneman and Max Holden plundered 71 in the hour that took the former to his first fifty for eleven innings, off only 41 balls.

Holden, the foil to Stoneman’s belligerence, moved quietly on to 44 and the pair will resume their 125-run partnership on Wedneday with Middlesex only 48 in arrears.