Teenage tailender Sebastian Morgan narrowly missed out on a maiden career hundred as Middlesex racked up the joint fifth-highest total in their history against Gloucestershire in the County Championship at Lord’s.<\/p>\n
Morgan, who turned 18 last month and is making his third first-class appearance, was out for 97 after sharing a partnership of 179 with his captain Leus du Plooy \u2013 a county record for the eighth wicket against Gloucestershire \u2013 to help Middlesex amass 634-9 declared.<\/p>\n
Du Plooy also posted his best first-class score, an unbeaten 263, to put the visitors firmly under pressure in their final game of the season, despite Ajeet Singh Dale’s return of 5-108.<\/p>\n
Gloucestershire openers Ben Charlesworth (63) and Joe Phillips (36) responded with a century stand before three wickets fell for eight runs, two of them to spinner Zafar Gohar against his former team.<\/p>\n
Singh Dale, stuck on four wickets since the previous afternoon in his farewell game for Gloucestershire, lost no more time in completing a five-for, with Joe Cracknell taken low at slip for 64 in the seamer’s first over of the morning.<\/p>\n
He might have claimed a sixth victim soon afterwards when former team-mate Gohar swished outside off stump, but this time slip fielder Ollie Price could not cling on to the chance.<\/p>\n
It was spinner Graeme van Buuren who eventually removed Gohar, dragging on from a long way outside off stump, and his dismissal seemed to dispel any Middlesex thoughts of making a dart for a fifth batting bonus point.<\/p>\n
Instead, Du Plooy sidled towards 200, while Morgan kept the scoreboard ticking along with an early brace of sweetly-struck fours off Marchant de Lange and went on to dominate the partnership.<\/p>\n
Du Plooy eventually emerged from his shell, charging down the track to drive Price over the top for four to seal his double ton from 294 balls, while Morgan’s half-century arrived soon afterwards courtesy of a leg-side clip to the fence off Singh Dale.<\/p>\n
Despite a spell of playing and missing to Matt Taylor just after lunch \u2013 and a return chance on 72 that De Lange was unable to grab \u2013 the teenager continued to flourish, expanding his repertoire to include a slog sweep and reverse sweep.<\/p>\n
Both were productive against Gloucestershire’s spinners, with a six off Jack Taylor ushering the total past the 600 mark shortly after identical tactics by Du Plooy had lifted his personal score beyond 250.<\/p>\n
But Morgan’s decision to attempt another reverse sweep against Price proved his undoing as he overbalanced while James Bracey took off the bails and, after a quickfire 19 by Toby Roland-Jones, the declaration soon followed.<\/p>\n
That left Phillips and Charlesworth to navigate 10 overs until tea and they did so with little cause for concern, the left-hander looking strong off his pads as well as punching Roland-Jones for two cover boundaries.<\/p>\n
Successive fours off Noah Cornwell took Charlesworth along to 50 at just under a run a ball and he continued on the offensive, using his feet and dispatching Gohar over the top twice in an over.<\/p>\n
Phillips gained a life when Roland-Jones found the edge, only for Sam Robson \u2013 diving across from slip \u2013 to shell the chance, but the seamer did achieve a breakthrough in his next over as Charlesworth tried to cut and Cracknell snared a tumbling catch behind the stumps.<\/p>\n
Gohar then struck twice in quick succession, pinning Phillips lbw before a looping bat-pad catch accounted for Miles Hammond, but Price and Bracey guided Gloucestershire to the close with another 339 needed to save the follow-on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teenage tailender Sebastian Morgan narrowly missed out on a maiden career hundred as Middlesex racked up the joint…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-160670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}