Rocky Flintoff makes his first half-century in professional cricket while his side are beaten again.
Middlesex 236 for 5 (Cracknell 98, Morley 3-45) beat Lancashire 233 for 9 (Flintoff 88, Brookes 4-43) by five-wickets.
Lancashire suffered a sixth straight defeat in the Metro Bank One Day Cup in a crushing five wicket defeat handed to them by Middlesex.
The only bright light in what was a miserable day for Lancashire was the batting performance of young starlets Rocky Flintoff and Kesh Fonseka.
The youngest son of England cricketing legend Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff stood strong where his teammates faltered and made 88 runs in what was his first match at Lancashire’s home, Old Trafford.
At 16 years old, he is Lancashire’s youngest ever player and is now the youngest ever player to make a 50 in List A cricket.
His innings was punctuated with clever shots finding singles where the Middlesex field placement couldn’t prevent them.
One of Flintoff’s most favourable scoring shots were his straight drives through the offside where he scored 24 runs, including one maximum he put back over the bowler’s head.
Not scoring a boundary for 59 balls, Flintoff eased his way past his half-century and totted up his total with six different batters coming and going while he stood strong on his Old Trafford debut.
“future stars”
Initially, he joined fellow academy graduate Kesh Fonseka at the crease who went well on his List A debut for Lancs falling just short of his half-century, scoring 42.
The two differ in figure hugely with Flintoff standing at 6 ‘4 and Fonsenka around 5’ 6. This proved difficult for the Middlesex bowling attack to deal with and the two future stars forged a partnership of 58.
Kesh Fonseka opened the batting on debut and played some hugely impressive cover drives to push Lancashire’s score early in the match.
His demise came only two balls after he and Flintoff had put up their 50 partnership where he went sweep slogging and found the top edge of his bat and eventually the arms of Middlesex’s Luke Hollman, who took three catches for his side.
As soon as the visitors brought spin on against Fonseka, he didn’t look like scoring as well as he had against pace.
Other than those two innings, it was much of the same for Lancashire who struggled to put together an innings and left their opponents requiring 233 after DLS in 48 overs.
Middlesex’s opening partnership came out with intent and within three overs had surpassed all but two partnerships put together by the home side.
The visitors tore Lancashire’s bowlers to shreds and, despite an early wicket from debutant Josh Boyden, cruised their way to victory at Old Trafford.
Both Middlesex’s bowlers and batters can be proud of their performances today, in particular the economic seam bowler Ethan Bamber and opening batsman Joe Cracknell.
Cracknell failed to convert his innings into a maiden List A century thanks to a questionable stumping decision, however, his 98 was enough to take Middlesex over the line.
A rapid-fire flow of late wickets brought the phrase ‘too little too late’ to mind as Middlesex stumbled over the line with five wickets spare.
Morley ended up with figures of 3-48 and Boyden took another wicket in the late barrage of batters falling.
Lancashire have now lost six games in a row for the first time ever in one season.
Sometimes watching Lancashire games can feel like going into a Maths exam that you’ve not prepared for at all and yet you still turn up to attempt it, only to realise you have no idea what a simultaneous equation is. It slowly unfurls as you muddle your way through your workings and you end up failing, without much fight.
They don’t seem to offer anything different in the field at any point to the batters to test them or unsettle them at the crease.
Lancashire look ahead to three more games in the One Day Cup and the side are yet to gain a point in the competition. Salford Now will have a report next Wednesday of Lancashire’s next home game vs Worcestershire.
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