Blog of James Goodhead

Before returning to York, I took the opportunity to visit the Home of Cricket, Lords. After a relaxing start to the day, I arrived to St. John’s Wood during the Lunch interval on the third day (out of four). Being a London Victoria Championhip match, the attendance was understandably low. However, the crowd was boosted from a large amount of schoolchildren who were both supporters and had the great opportunity to grace the outfield during the Lunch interval creating a carnival atmosphere.

Lancashire were the opponents for Middlesex and had posted an impressive 505 runs in their first innings. Not so impressively, Middlesex were bowled out for a dismal 161 runs, thus were forced to follow-on. When I joined, E. Smith had just completed his century for Middlesex and O. Shah was well poised, providing signs of a strong recovery by Middlesex. After seeing off the Lancashire’s seamers in the first dozen overs of the afternoon session, the Lancashire spinners were then brought on to exploit the rough that was becoming more pronounced on both sides of the wicket. To the crowd’s delight, O. Shah started to take the attack to the spinners, especially B. Hodge, by dancing down the track and smashing the ball to and over the mid-wicket boundary. Yet, in quick succession, the spinners managed to gain revenge as they masterfully took the wickets of four of the Middlesex batsmen, leaving the Home team in an extremely precarious situation. As a form of consolatoin, S. Styris provided a comprehensive set of attacking strokeplay and eventually reached 133 off only 127 balls. Despite the defeat being inevitable by the final hour of the day, it certainly is always a pleasure to watch cricket at Lords, especially in the glorious weather that Friday afternoon provided.