A Royal Hundred for Denly

Lower Mound provides a superb report of day 3. Nearly all cricket related. Read on.

The day belonged to one person: Joe Denly. While all the batsmen tended to struggle, Denly made batting look easy, playing shots all around the ground.

Middlesex started the day on 148-2, with Denly on 34 and Chris Rogers on 3. From the Nursery End, Alan Richardson had to finish his over which had started on Friday evening, and the first two balls he bowled today were dispatched for four by Denly. Off the final ball of the following over from the Pavilion End bowled by David Lucas, Buck benefited from a misfield to run two and take his score to 5. After Richardson bowled a maiden over to Denly, Buck scored a three off the first ball of Lucas' next over to make it five runs in two balls. However, that was as good as it got for Buck, as he edged a ball from Lucas to Ben Scott for 9 to make it 166-3, giving Lucas his 250th first-class wicket, and bringing Dawid Malan to the crease.

Two overs later, Denly hit a boundary off Lucas. However, Richardson's bowling was causing problems for all the batsmen, and he was able to get AC to edge to Vikram Solanki in the slips for 0. Just as I looked up after writing about AC's dismissal, Neil Dexter was trudging his way back to the Pavilion having two stumps removed the next ball to make it 172-5.

John Simpson was now in, although he began his innings off-strike due to the wickets falling off the last two balls of the over, and therefore he had to initially watch Denly bat. The second ball which Simmo witnessed resulted in Denly playing a cracking drive off Lucas for four, bringing up his 50 off 94 balls with 9 fours. With the score on 180-5, Simmo gets two runs off Richardson.

With the score on 183-5, Richard Jones takes over from Richardson at the Nursery End, and Denly promptly smacks him to the Grand stand to take his score to 61. With Richardson out of the way, I said to myself that the runs should become easier. However, no sooner is Richardson out of the attack, that bad light and drizzle stops play at 12:15pm with Middlesex on 191-5, Denly on 65 and Simmo on 3. I then made my weekly visit to Church Street Market, but Jonathan stayed at Lord's and walked around Lord's. He told me that the umpires called for an early lunch to run from 12:45pm to 1:25pm. However, by the time lunch had finished, the conditions hadn't improved much. We then explored the Warner stand, but there wasn't much in there, and it wasn't particularly warm.

Play eventually recommenced at 2:40pm, with Richardson able to bowl from the Nursery End after his long break. In the 60th over, Simmo brought up our first batting point with two lofted drives. The following over off Lucas saw Denly play a glorious stroke for four and twice run two to take his score to 73. The over after that, Richardson found the edge of Simmo's bat, and he was caught by his adversary Scott for 14 to make the score 210-6. Gareth Berg now came in, and after playing himself in, hit his 20th ball to the Grand stand boundary for four.

Shortly after, Aneesh Kapil came on for the first time today from the Pavilion End, and his second ball was smashed by Denly for four and his third ball resulted in a single to take Denly to 91. There was another bowling change, as Jones came on from the Nursery End, and his first four balls went two, four, dot and four to give Denly a maiden century for Middlesex off 153 balls with 17 fours, and it ended the wait for a Middlesex batsman to pass 100 in a County Championship match in 2012. The next four overs did not produce any boundaries, although we nonetheless registered our second batting point in the 72nd over, with Denly's score being 105 and the Iceman's score being 8. With Jones and Kapil bowling, the runs were starting to flow. The 50 partnership then came up, taking just 70 balls, with Denly's contribution 36 and Berg's 14.

With the score on 280-6, James Cameron bowled from the Nursery End and his over yielded seven runs. With the field spread out just before tea, Moeen Ali had an over from the Pavilion End, but only one run was scored, and after Cameron bowled another over in which the only incident of note was the Iceman scoring a boundary, tea was called at 4:10pm. The score was 292-6 after 81 overs, with Denly on 118 and the Iceman on 35. The famous song by The Clash, Should I Stay or Should I Go?, came to mind, as the FA Cup final was an hour away, and I have been a Chelsea supporter for over 50 years. However, I decided to stay loyal to MTWD and finish the report, which I am sure is appreciated.

The new ball was available straight away, and it was unsurprisingly taken by Richardson and Lucas. In the ball's second over, the old Middlesex duo of Richardson and Scott managed to combine to dismiss the Iceman for a well-made 36 to end a partnership worth 88, and the score was now 298-7. The third batting point came up when Denly smashed Richardson for the first six of the day to the third man boundary. He and Tim Murtagh had some more fun before we eventually declared on 323-7, not that Jonathan was able to see much of this partnership, as he spent the time watching Soccer Saturday on the TV underneath the Grand stand so he could find out the final Leagues 1 and 2 tables. Denly finished on 134 not out off 197 balls, with 19 fours and one six. Richardson's return to Lord's saw him return figures of 33-12-89-5, while Lucas got through 30 overs, which are both remarkable tallies of overs considering the innings lasted 86 overs. The reason why they were able to get through such a high percentage of the overs was thanks to the various rain and bad light intervals allowing them to take regular breaks.

This meant that Worcestershire needed 178 to avoid the follow-on, which was the exact same figure as our target to win this fixture in September 2010, when we were all out for 66. They opened with Daryl Mitchell and Michael Klinger, while we opened with Steven Finn from the Pavilion End and Tim Murtagh from the Nursery End. They closed the day on 45-2 with Mitchell being caught by Dex off Dial M for 14, while shortly before bad light brought a close at 6:15pm, Klinger top edged a ball off Toby Roland-Jones, and Sam Robson took a running catch from slip. Ali made it as far as the crease, but no sooner had he arrived than the umpires took the players off.