County Championship: Middlesex v Northants, day 2

Half-centuries from Sam Robson and Leus du Plooy gave Middlesex the upper hand on the second day of their County Championship Division Two game against Northamptonshire at Merchant Taylors’ School.

Robson ground out a vital 58 while Du Plooy hit an unbeaten 66 as the home side reached 250-7, a first-innings advantage of 43.

Ben Sanderson kept Northamptonshire right in contention with figures of five for 58, regaining his status as Division Two’s leading wicket-taker after being briefly displaced by Middlesex captain Toby Roland-Jones.

Northamptonshire were dismissed for 207, with Roland-Jones taking a season’s best of 5-49 – and the visitors’ hopes of restricting Middlesex to a lower total were not helped as Prithvi Shaw shelled a trio of slip catches.

Sanderson and Lewis McManus did enough to usher the visitors beyond the key landmark of 200 as they extended their partnership to 83.

Henry Brookes bowled Sanderson around his legs and, although debutant Dom Leech cracked a cover boundary to raise the visitors’ 200, Roland-Jones quickly wrapped up the innings by capturing their last two wickets in three balls.

In reply, Middlesex’s opening pair both survived close calls but made it to the interval unscathed.

Sanderson uprooted Mark Stoneman’s off stump for 36 but Robson and Max Holden dug in for an afternoon of laborious progress.

Yuzvendra Chahal trapped Holden leg before for 25 before Sanderson took two wickets in as many deliveries, trapping Robson lbw to one that kept low and Stephen Eskinazi succumbing in identical fashion.

Middlesex were suddenly wobbling at 129-4 but a bristling partnership of 72 between Du Plooy and Nathan Fernandes was exactly what they needed.

Leech eventually brought the stand to an end with his first Northamptonshire wicket, having Fernandes taken at second slip, but Du Plooy remained to nudge his side into the lead with a crisp off-driven boundary.

Sanderson returned with the new ball and promptly claimed two more wickets in quick succession, completing his third five-for of the summer before Roland-Jones launched a late flurry of boundary-hitting.

He took two fours from successive Sanderson deliveries and had just cracked Justin Broad to the fence to earn Middlesex a batting bonus point when the deteriorating light brought play to a close.

Report supplied by the ECB Reporters Network