Sales hits career-best total against Middlesex
Rothesay County Championship, Division Two, County Ground, Northampton (day three)
Middlesex 341 & 109-1: Robson 49*, Holden 42*; Procter 1-29
Northamptonshire 409: Sales 164, McSweeney 107; Roland-Jones 3-83, Sharma 3-92
Middlesex (5 pts) lead Northants (7 pts) by 41 runs
James Sales and Liam Guthrie both posted career bests with the bat as their ninth-wicket partnership of 74 tilted a close contest in Northamptonshire’s favour against Middlesex at Wantage Road.
Sales (pictured) was last man out for 164, having shared a lengthy stand with fellow centurion Nathan McSweeney before tailender Guthrie’s spirited assault on the Middlesex bowling yielded 51 from 49 balls to stretch their side’s first-innings total to 409.
That gave Northamptonshire, chasing their first Rothesay County Championship victory of the season after two draws, a handy lead of 68, but Middlesex fought back with the bat to reach stumps 41 in front for the loss of Josh de Caires.
Sam Robson was one short of his half-century when the players went off for bad light, with Max Holden alongside him on 42.
Sales and McSweeney, whose partnership had already realised 131, continued to make steady progress during the first hour of play with a solitary scare – Sales’ edge off Ryan Higgins falling just short of the diving Joe Cracknell behind the stumps.
Bowling with pace and zip, Naavya Sharma caused a few problems for McSweeney before the Australian took advantage of a looser delivery to whip a four off his hips that took him to his second successive century.
It was Tom Helm who eventually broke the stand of 164, persuading McSweeney to clip straight to midwicket and Northamptonshire were six down in the next over as George Bartlett left a ball from Sharma that fizzed back to hit the top of his stumps.
Sales remained unfazed at the other end, drilling Sharma to the cover boundary to bring up his fourth first-class hundred – and the third he has registered against Middlesex in the last three seasons at Wantage Road.
The new ball brought Middlesex further reward prior to lunch, with Lewis McManus – who had been dropped at slip off Helm – taken behind off a Higgins delivery that reared off the shoulder of the bat.
Ben Sanderson followed early in the afternoon session, caught at second slip off an outside edge with Northamptonshire still in arrears, but that quickly changed as Guthrie launched a fiery salvo against the seamers.
The left-hander patted his first ball from Sharma over the wicketkeeper’s head for four and maintained the offensive, pulling and hooking a string of boundaries before clubbing Toby Roland-Jones for six.
Another top-edged four off Helm took Guthrie to a 45-ball half-century and, once he finally fell to a sharp one-handed catch by Robson at second slip, the home side were within sight of a fourth batting bonus point.
Sales, having cracked Luke Hollman for two sixes to pass 150 for the first time, duly notched up that collective target with a boundary off Roland-Jones before holing out to long-off on the stroke of tea.
There were a couple of early alarms for Middlesex’s openers when they began their second innings, with De Caires almost playing on and Robson’s edge off Harry Conway shelled at slip by Ricardo Vasconcelos.
But they did enough to see off Conway and Sanderson and it was home captain Luke Procter who achieved the breakthrough, winning an lbw decision against De Caires with Middlesex only halfway to wiping out the deficit.
Robson settled into the groove, though, cutting with authority and steering Guthrie to the midwicket fence to take his side out of the red, while Holden unveiled some classy strokes to negate the leg-spin of Calvin Harrison.
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