Price causes Middlesex problems on day two
VITALITY COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP DIVISION 2
Middlesex: 377
Gloucestershire: 154-5
Gloucestershire 3pts trail Middlesex 4pts by 223 runs with 5 first-innings wickets standing.
Ollie Price and the weather combined to frustrate promotion-chasing Middlesex on the second day of their Vitality County Championship Division Two clash at Lord’s.
Right-hander Price showed guts a-plenty to post 56 not out, his fifth score of 50 or more in the first-class game this season, as the visitors battled to 154-5, 223 in arrears of their hosts, on a day when only 41.4 overs were bowled due to bad light and rain.
Not many of the Durham University graduate’s 7 4s came off the middle of the bat as the home bowlers found plenty of movement through the air and off the pitch, the inside edge past leg-stump being a profitable source of runs.
However, Price’s grit came in the wake of Middlesex skipper Toby Roland-Jones’ burst of 3-12 in 16 balls either side of lunch and served to take the men from the west country from 74-4 to calmer waters, albeit needing a further74 to save the follow-on. Roland-Jones had taken 3-56 and Ryan Higgins 2-47 when bad light, followed by rain, drove the players off for the second and final time at 3:15pm.
The bad light, accompanied by some light rain delayed the start by 40 minutes before under still largely leaden skies with the lights on batting proved a hazardous occupation from the off. The first ball of the day from Roland-Jones to Cameron Bancroft was edged between third slip and gully for three, so setting the tone.
Roland-Jones and Higgins constantly challenged both edges of the bat in ideal seam conditions, Ben Charlesworth edging the former just short of wicket-keeper Jack Davies when he’d made eight. He wouldn’t prosper for long, soon nicking a beauty from Higgins to Sam Robson at first slip.
For a while Bancroft rode his luck, the majority of his 25 coming behind the wicket, before he was undone by one from Roland-Jones which jagged back between bat and pad to trim the bails.
Bad light soon intervened again to drive the players off for an early lunch and when they returned Roland-Jones made whatever new batter Miles Hammond had consumed all-but indigestible by hitting him mid-ships first ball.
The batter continued after treatment, crashing one sumptuous four through cover only to then edge another snorter from Roland-Jones to Tom Helm at third slip.
When the veteran seamer, whose contract was extended for another year only yesterday, removed James Bracey caught behind two balls later, Gloucestershire were 74-4 and in peril.
Price dug in using all parts of the bat to survive, an authoritative on-drive off Helm the pick of his shots.
Graeme Van Buren joined him in a stand of 50 from 67 balls broken by Higgins who trapped his man on the crease.
Price’s older brother Tom then joined him in the middle, surviving a blow on the head from a short one from Helm to keep vigil until the weather had the final word.
