Higgins, du Plooy steer Middlesex home in fourth innings chase

Middlesex 246 (du Plooy 51, De Caires 50, Thompson 5-80) and 158 for 4 (du Plooy 42, Holden 35, Higgins 33*) beat Yorkshire 159 (Higgins 4-31) and 244 (Hill 75, Higgins 3-41, Roland-Jones 3-78) by 6 wickets

Leus Du Plooy and Ryan Higgins steered Middlesex to six-wicket victory over Vitality County Championship Division Two favourites Yorkshire on an absorbing day three at Lord’s.

Hungarian citizen Du Plooy and the Zimbabwean-born Higgins, shared a match-winning stand of 59 just as the Seaxes were wobbling at 77 for 3 in pursuit of 158 to win in this low-scoring encounter.

Du Plooy fell eight short of 50 with victory in sight, but Higgins remained 33 not out when Stephen Eskinazi made the winning runs. Ben Coad’s 2 for 20 led a spirited attempt by the visitors to defend the tally, but in the end they didn’t have enough on the board.

The chase came after Yorkshire, who resumed on 216-7 were dismissed in the first 40 minutes of the day for 244, George Hill last man out after extending his overnight 52 to 75 with several well struck boundaries, Middlesex skipper Toby Roland-Jones finishing with 3 for 78.

The win marks a significant moment for Middlesex. Relegated from the top tier last year after gleaning only five batting bonus points – three of those in the final game of the season – they had surpassed that total in the first two games of this against a Kookaburra ball rendered impotent by placid surfaces.

This however was in many ways the acid test, a fourth innings run chase in a game where batting had proved difficult against just about everyone’s tip for the laurels.

It should probably come as no surprise that Du Plooy, the man brought in over the winter to shore up the batting ranks, combined with Higgins, so often the sole contributor in 2023, to get Middlesex over the line.

There was drama first ball of the chase when Shan Masood brilliantly fielded Nathan Fernandes’s cover-drive and shied at the stumps, the suspicion being the youngster would have been short of his ground had the throw hit, despite a full-length dive. Two balls later however, Mark Stoneman was trapped lbw to Coad for nought giving the visitors a dream start.

A tense 75 minutes unfolded as Fernandes and Holden resisted against probing bowling. Holden calmed home nerves with a couple of glorious cover drives, before being given a life on 17 when gloving a short one from Mickey Edwards only for Jonathan Tattersall to spill the gift and allow the hosts to lunch on 40 for 1.

When battle resumed it was just as tense, Fernandes and Holden, defiant in defence, getting a big stride in as often as possible to negate any swing. The partnership crept to 50 before four overthrows from a sharp Holden single added to the visitors’ growing sense of frustration.

The tension though would tell on Fernandes, who, bogged down, hooked an innocuous short ball from Thompson down the throat of Hill at long leg. Du Plooy might have followed him a few balls later to an identical shot which to his relief carried a few yards further and cleared the rope.

Coad returned to have Holden caught behind from one that bounced on him and was taken by Tattersall standing up, in the aftermath of which time seemed to stand still as disciplined bowling to a well-set field suffocated attempts to score.

Boundaries for Ryan Higgins in successive overs from Thompson helped the hosts over 100, those blows seeming to break the shackles as the White Rose which had for so long promised to blossom amid adversity, slowly but inexorably wilted.

Du Plooy slashed one from Moriarty to Adam Lyth at slip on 42, but victory came without further alarms 25 minutes after tea.

Earlier Coad had edged his first ball of the day from Ethan Bamber into the hands of Du Plooy at slip to end an eighth-wicket stand of 62 and thereafter only the aggression of Hill pushed Yorkshire’s lead beyond 150.

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