Glamorgan captain makes earliest triple-century in county history, but Middlesex dig in in reply
Andrew Miller06-Apr-2024Middlesex 138 for 1 (Stoneman 62*) trail Glamorgan 620 for 3 dec (Northeast 335*, Ingram 132*, Carlson 77, Root 67) by 482 runsGreed is good, as Sam Northeast proved on the second day of the English season at Lord’s. After ransacking Middlesex’s bowlers to the tune of 186 not out on day one, Glamorgan’s captain had insisted that was just the base-camp of his ambitions. For 412 balls across eight-and-three-quarter hours of formidable record-wrecking accumulation, he was utterly true to his word.By the time he marched off in mid-afternoon with 335 not out to his name, out of Glamorgan’s towering total of 620 for 3 declared, Northeast had gone higher than any batter at the equivalent stage of any previous county season, and further into Lord’s own ancient record-books than any man in more than 200 years of precedent.No player had ever scored a Championship triple-hundred at an earlier date than April 6 – the Somerset pairing of Justin Langer in 2007 and James Hildreth in 2009 are the only other players even to have achieved the feat in this cruellest of months. But it was the nudged single through midwicket 34 runs after that milestone that resonated longest and loudest with a knowledgeable Lord’s crowd, as Northeast toppled Graham Gooch’s iconic 333 against India as the highest first-class score at cricket’s most-famous ground.More than 2800 first-class fixtures have taken place at Lord’s since July 1814, when MCC – having twice moved home in their previous 27 years of existence – christened their ultimate venue with a local derby against St John’s Wood, in which neither team made as much as 200 across four innings.Even allowing for a conservative estimate of 25 wickets per first-class match since, that amounts to some 70,000 individual innings in the ground’s history (to date, the equivalent figure across 2537 Tests is 78578 completed innings). Only five of those had previously produced a triple-century, most recently Mark Wagh (sic, of Warwickshire not Australia), in 2001. None, though, have been higher than Northeast’s latest opus.It’s only his latest, of course, because this was not even the highest score of Northeast’s first-class career. That came at Grace Road two seasons ago, against Leicestershire, when he made the ninth-highest individual innings in all of first-class cricket, a mighty (and match-winning) 410 not out against Leicestershire.Sam Northeast takes the plaudits from Colin Ingram after making 335 not out, the highest first-class score at Lord’s•Andrew Miller/ESPNcricinfo Ltd
At the age of 34, and having – like the aforementioned Hildreth – come to be regarded as the best batter of his generation not to have earned an England call-up, this performance is unlikely to change anything on that front. And by the close, it might not count for a whole lot more than Glamorgan’s handy haul of four batting points. Craig Miles’ dismissal of Sam Robson for 43 in the 30th over of Middlesex’s reply turned out to be the only wicket that fell all day, as Mark Stoneman’s doughty half-century confirmed that the Kookaburra ball would prove to be every bit as truculent for the visitors.That scarcely detracted from the quality of Northeast’s performance, however. The day was only four overs old when a punched single into the covers secured him his first ambition, a second career double-hundred, but it was the moment of his 250, secured with a thumped drive over long-off off Ryan Higgins in the final half-hour of the morning, that truly ignited his mood.By then, Northeast had survived a second costly miss at backward point – on 239 this time, compared to 11 on the first morning – but there was no question of treating the moment as a cautionary tale. Each his six sixes poured forth thereafter, three off Higgins as he strayed too full in his arc, and three more off the toiling spinner Josh De Caires, including a monstrous mow across the line and over the extra-long Grandstand boundary, some 80 yards up the hill.De Caires – whose father Mike Atherton had been watching the rain fall at Old Trafford on day one before driving his own parents down to witness their grandson in action – eventually retreated with the bruised figures of 28-0-147-0, including a leg-side long-hop that allowed Northeast to roll his wrists through a pull through backward square and rush on through to that triple-hundred. By then, however, De Caires (and his grandparents) should have had something to cheer with Northeast on 291, only for Jack Davies behind the stumps to make a hash of a regulation stumping.That wasn’t the only lapse as Middlesex’s discipline deserted them amid the onslaught. As the understudy in a hefty fourth-wicket stand of 299, Colin Ingram’s own century was almost as overshadowed as Keith Piper’s at Edgbaston in June 1994, and clean though most of his boundaries were, his late volley of four sixes in 12 balls included a gruesome fumble over the ropes from Henry Brookes at deep third.None of it ultimately mattered, however. As, indeed, might also be said of the remaining two days of a bat-dominant game – though tell that to Stoneman and Max Holden, whose own quests for a statement innings are only just beginning.”It’s a privilege to play here and to break a record like that is just beyond my wildest dreams, to be honest,” Northeast said at the close. “It blew my mind. I got pretty nervous out there at the end, when I was nearing it.”I didn’t really think about it until I was on about 330. A member told me as I was walking out and I sort of forgot about it [the record] – then when I got near, I started thinking about it again.”It’s a special day. The game situation was what I was thinking about at that stage but then a personal milestone like that – I had to make sure I got it.”