Middlesex 101 and 97 for 3 (Eskinazi 48*, Worrall 2-21) trail Gloucestershire 248 and 272 (Bracey 88, Mitchell 4-42) by 322 runs
For two days, so we have been told, Cheltenham has dodged the showers. This attributes a degree of agility to the College Ground that even so magical a location might struggle to achieve but it is still a fair reflection of our good luck. While other matches in this round were hosed upon 'big style' on Monday and Tuesday Gloucestershire and Middlesex's cricketers went about their business more or less unimpeded. Such splendid good fortune is no more than Cheltenham and its staff deserve but it came to a wet end this morning when a couple of determined downpours prevented any play before luncheon.
The gruffer critics, recalling Middlesex's disintegration on Tuesday afternoon, observed that a few showers at least offered the prospect of this game lasting into its fourth morning. Sadly there was brutal justice in that view. One of the tougher joys of the county programme is its insistence that a side's capacity for resistance should be tested over six months and there were suggestions in the visitors' first innings that one or two batsmen were resigned to a grim fate. Six defeats in eight games do that to cricketers.
The job of the coach and captain at such times is to convince their mentally battered players that a seventh defeat is not pre-ordained, even at points in the season when they have mislaid their powers of resistance. Put simply, therefore, when Middlesex began their pursuit of 420 to win this game in the middle of this third afternoon their players had to believe a rot could be stopped.
Two players' innings suggested the message had been received. After both openers had been removed inside the first six overs, Stevie Eskinazi and Peter Handscomb, each of them with just one first-class half-century to their credit this season, defied Gloucestershire's confident attack for 30 overs adding only 48 runs in the process but at least showing the kind of fight their side has frequently lacked this summer. The cricket was absorbing as James Bracey rotated his six-man attack intelligently, never over-bowling Dan Worrall and Matt Taylor, his main threats, but keeping all his bowlers fresh, secure in the knowledge that this game has another day to go.
Handscomb, while he is no Hashim Amla, was unconcerned by his failure to score freely and went 45 minutes without adding to his 13 runs. However, having pushed a single to midwicket, he fell leg before to Worrall and it was left to Eskinazi and Daryl Mitchell to resist Gloucestershire's bowlers for another hour. They did this in relative comfort and that rich period of play also featured the two huge sixes that Mitchell whacked over long-on when he came down the pitch to the off-spinner Ollie Price. All the same this was classic County Championship fare, old-school cricket, if you will. The fact that it took place at Cheltenham made the vintage even richer. And there will be cricket here tomorrow when Eskinazi will resume his innings on 48 not out.
The cultured and discriminating defence offered by Middlesex's middle-order was all the more vital given the early dismissal of their openers. First to go was Josh de Caires, who punched his third and fourth balls through midwicket for pleasant twos but was then dropped by Glenn Phillips at first slip off his sixth ball but caught by the same fielder off his tenth when attempting a drive. Given that de Caires nearly ran himself out at the non-striker's end in the over between his first escape and final snaring, it would be fair to describe his second innings in big school as nervy yet even this was understandable given that he was facing Worrall, whose sponsorship by a firm of funeral directors is very fitting.
But it was Matt Taylor, a slightly more civilised fellow and consequently receiving financial support from auctioneers, who took the next wicket when he brought one back in to have Sam Robson leg before for nought. There was the slightest suspicion the ball pitched outside leg but this did not really justify Robson leaning on his bat and delaying his departure with the air of a man visited by undeserved malignity. That, though, is what happens when the bottom has dropped out of your grocery bag too many times in one summer.
We then settled into a wonderful few hours during which no home supporters barracked the batsmen and few spectators left the College Ground. All the same, the dot-stuffed tension of Middlesex's innings had been preceded by a far more carefree 85 minutes' cricket in which Gloucestershire lost their last four wickets in scoring a further 84 runs. The highlight of this session of play was a fine seventh-wicket partnership of 65 in 17 overs between Ollie and Tom Price, a stand in which both brothers played a series of attractive strokes. Ollie was eventually caught behind off Tim Murtagh for 33 but Tom ended the innings unbeaten on 35 and the pair's value to Gloucestershire is plainly enhanced by their useful bowling. There was no value in the Prices simply occupying the crease - the lead was already 345 when their partnership began - but their self-possession was impressive and somehow emblematic of a county that is enjoying a prolonged and deserved revival in their fortunes. One does not need to hail from Prestbury or Painswick to be pleased by that.
