Sussex 33 for 1 (Wells 17*) trail Middlesex 234 (Malan 93) by 201 runs
Scorecard
Is there such a thing as a limited-overs hangover? To browse some of the scorecards in this round of Championship fixtures, which seem to have crept up on everyone in this Royal London Cup-riddled part of the schedule like that early-morning business meeting you thought you had rearranged, it seems so.
At Lord's, 11 wickets fell in the day, as a sizeable crowd showed up to witness the first Championship match here since Hampshire arrived at the end of June, before a wait till the second week of September for the arrival of Yorkshire. The turnout was so surprising that, soon after tea, the Pavilion had run out of food.
Middlesex won the toss and were bowled out for just 234. That demise included a stumble worthy of any late-night reveller: four wickets falling for just nine runs in the space of 55 balls. The signs were there this morning that, after three weeks of riding the white-ball horse, something did not feel right.
The boundary away to the Mound Stand was short, while the pitch had already had 100 overs put into it from the humbling at the hands of Nottinghamshire. In fact, it was only yesterday that Middlesex realised they would be playing on the same wicket and, after seeing the success that the spin of Imran Tahir and Samit Patel had enjoyed, decided to recall Ravi Patel from a loan-spell at Essex. Patel himself had already been named in Essex's squad for their four-day match against Surrey at Colchester, the knock-on effect being a rare recall for Monty Panesar.
Armed with two spinners and faced with a track already a day old, the decision to bat first, regardless of the outcome, was correct. But truth be told, there was little in the play of these two teams to suggest that their long-form skill has been compromised. The short-boundary could probably be credited with two of the dismissals, as Nick Gubbins and James Franklin went in search for an easy four, both through dabs rather than insolence across the line.
But credit should go to a Sussex attack brought together by injuries rather than design. In an alternate universe where the county are able to select from their full complement of pace - Jimmy Anyon, Chris Jordan, Tymal Mills, Ajmal Shahzad and Lewis Hatchett are all currently out injured - you could pick four out of a hat and end up with something Division One-worthy. Instead, Chris Liddle was drafted into the XI to play his first Championship match of the season. In return, the left-arm seamer, who has primarily been operating as a white-ball bowler since moving from Leicestershire to Sussex back in 2006, took 3 for 42. To put that in perspective, the last time he took wickets in a Championship match was back here in 2013, where he finished with match figures of 3 for 98.
While Steve Magoffin did what he does - bash out a length, persist on a line and find every drop of movement out of the surface - to take 4 for 48, it was Liddle's set of 16 that was perhaps the most impressive. Unperturbed by the short boundary, he bowled with good pace from the Pavilion End and, whether over the wicket to the left-hander or around it to the right, offered little width that could be worked to the short-side or slashed to the longer, Grandstand boundary.
It was down to Ollie Robinson to do the most end-hopping yet he still managed to maintain his control to take three wickets of his own.
Even after their good work, it may still turn out that Middlesex's first go is about par given how much this pitch could deteriorate over the next few days. A solid 90-run partnership for the third wicket between Nick Compton and Dawid Malan took the hosts out of a sticky situation, at 24 for 2, before Malan survived the cascade of wickets to register another fifty partnership with Ollie Rayner.
Malan's composure was pleasing to watch, as he took the mature decision to focus solely on timing rather than force for his 93 runs: an array of back-cuts and well-placed drives bringing him 12 fours before he was strangled down the leg-side.
Sussex could do with taking pages out of his book but, as Tim Murtagh and Toby Roland-Jones showed at the end of the day, this pitch still has plenty to say. That a man of Ed Joyce's skill basically walked went he was struck in front by a Roland-Jones delivery that he could not lay a bat on, gives an indication of just how tricky batting will get.
