Strauss leads Middlesex reply against Worcestershire

An attritional day of cricket at Lord's on the third day of the rain affected CricInfo Championship match took Middlesex, with five wickets standing, into a one run lead over Worcestershire.

Middlesex's left-handed opener, Andy Strauss scored 125, his highest first-class score and was the common factor in two substantial partnerships, the first of them being an opening stand of 129 with Mick Roseberry, who made 63.

Theirs was Middlesex's first three-figure opening stand since Strauss and Mark Ramprakash put on 102 against Northamptonshire in the opening match of last season.

After Roseberry departed, dollying a catch with a mistimed pull at Matthew Liptrot, Strauss and Owais Shah added 97. Again Worcestershire could manage to capture only one wicket in the session.

Half way through it, Strauss, who had been in for 281 minutes and faced 253 balls, was caught behind cutting at Graeme Hick, bowling off-breaks. Shah, 30 at the time of his dismissal, got hopelessly bogged down and could scrape together only nine more runs in 17 overs before tea.

Middlesex's overseas player, Stephen Fleming, New Zealand's captain, scored twenty of the 36 runs added in this time.

He eventually fell for 42, providing the first wicket of overseas player Andy Bichel's season as Middlesex stuttered in the final session. Shah fell just short of a painstaking half-century and Hutton, who hit the first first-class century of the season last week, found the going harder in the Championship, succumbing to Rawnsley for four.