Max Holden<\/a> tallied his second Vitality Blast fifty of the season to keep Middlesex’s slim chances of reaching the quarter-finals alive.<\/p>\nHolden shrugged off a tough pitch for batting to make 62 and take Middlesex to back-to-back victories.<\/p>\n
Toby Albert and Ben Mayes’ 40s dragged Hampshire Hawks to 159 but Holden trumped them with a sensible innings.<\/p>\n
Hawks were already booked in for the knockouts but could still lose their prized home tie, while Middlesex can mathematically still chase Essex down for a third-placed finish.<\/p>\n
As had been demonstrated during the earlier women’s competition match, a slow pitch proved difficult to bat on, although Toby Albert tried to his best to give the innings some impetus, having been stuck in.<\/p>\n
Last season’s leading Blast scorer Albert, had struggled to replicate his 2025 exploits, with just 152 runs in nine innings in 2026.<\/p>\n
A flurry of boundaries, including three sixes in a row, seemed to get his season going, as he put on 60 with James Vince for the first wicket.<\/p>\n
But Middlesex’s tight start was rewarded with three quick wickets just before the halfway mark – with spinners dislodging Vince and Weatherley, while Albert was run out four runs short of a half-century.<\/p>\n
Mayes and Tristan Stubbs recorrected the innings, although not in a free-flowing manner. Patience and hard running were occasionally compensated with well-earned boundaries.<\/p>\n
Like the opening pair, the duo added 60, with Mayes grafting for a career-high 47.<\/p>\n
It was hard to know if 159 was a competitive total due to the nature of the pitch, but Eddie Jack, marking his first T20 appearance of the year, with a first-over spliced pull wicket of Josh de Caires gave Hawks the better start.<\/p>\n
Matt Boyle and Holden evened and then pulled ahead with a steady partnership that got Middlesex ahead of the rate – but Neal entered and took two wickets in his first over.<\/p>\n
The left-armer pinned both Boyle and Josh du Plooy but it didn’t prove to be the turning point it appeared to be.<\/p>\n
Holden once again steadied things, this time with Ben Geddes, and serenely moved to a 41-ball fifty.<\/p>\n
He was caught trying to turn Neal around the corner – giving the spinner three for 29 – but despite Luke Hollman holing out, Middlesex saw the 16 remaining runs home to end Hampshire’s perfect home record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Middlesex 162 for 5 (Holden 62, Geddes 44*) beat Hampshire 159 for 4 (Mayes 47*, Albert 46) by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[4955,64,63,740,371996,371995,232,85,337895],"class_list":["post-788592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-articles","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-ham-vs-mid","tag-hampshire-vs-middlesex-south-group-cricket-news","tag-reports","tag-sports","tag-vitality-blast-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}