Sorry about the lateness of the blog tonight but we made a day of our last one in Blackpool and only set off home after one more day there.
We were kept in the game today by two innings. One, from captain Wayne Madsen, was the type of knock that we have come to expect from him over recent seasons, while the other, from Peter Burgoyne, was a sign of things to come from a youngster with the brightest of futures.
One can only have the utmost respect for the skipper and the way that he has risen to the challenge of this level more than any of his team mates and maintained form despite numerous trials and tribulations for his team along the way. Today's innings leaves him only 111 runs short of his thousand for the summer, compiled currently at the very respectable average of 48. He looks and is a class act and continues to play a crucial role in the side.
The rest of the batsmen largely got starts but were dismissed before making something special of their innings, until Peter Burgoyne came in and hit a fine unbeaten 62 in only his third first class innings for the county. I think that Burgoyne and Alex Hughes will be the heartbeat of our middle order, either at 5/6 or 6/7 for some time to come and their all round talents will afford balance to the side.
It was a day when Shiv Chanderpaul at his best would have been an asset but he went in single figures and will probably be disappointed with his current average of 42, good by many standards but not by the lofty ones that he has set. Both he and we will hope for a big finish to the season, especially as he is some 300 runs in the skipper's slipstream in the scoring stakes.
There was time for a quick wicket in the Sussex second innings for the admirable Mr Groenewald, but much work remains to be done if we are to get anything from this game, whether a win or a draw. The sterling efforts of the above named players should not distract us from the fact that the next highest score, besides 37 extras, was the 16 of Ben Slater.
A decent day then, but much still to be done in this one.
Postscript - only Middlesex's Sam Robson and Ed Joyce of current opponents Sussex have more runs in division one than Madsen, the latter with only one run more to his name.
Quite a remarkable effort.
I couldn,t agree more regarding Madsen. He,s been an absolute rock this season with the bat and is the one player who can hold his head high. Young Burgoyne also underlined his potential with the willow and between the two of them we managed to reach some sort of respectability.
ReplyDeleteI,m sure Sussex will be very keen to win the game and to that end,assuming we don,t bowl them out,will set us a genuine target. If that proves to be the case,we need some of the other players to significantly contribute if we are to stand any realistic chance of winning. It wouldn,t be out of the question for Madsen to reach a thousand runs in this game and if he does,we could even be looking at a win.