The County Championship is back, so it's time for Tim Murtagh

NICK FRIEND: There are few fates as certain in the county game as falling to Murtagh, king of the Lord's slope, even a matter of months from his 40th birthday. Just 59 wickets stand between him and the milestone of 900 in first-class cricket

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This might be the last hurrah for Tim Murtagh as a professional cricketer. But then, it might not be. “I’ve said it in interviews for the last three or four years,” he laughs. In truth, he doesn’t quite know yet.

“As long as I’m still doing a good job and still feel like I warrant a place in the team and I’m still enjoying it, I want to keep playing as long as I can.

“Every year, I start knowing that it could well be my last. Then, we have a conversation halfway through the summer about what the club’s thoughts are and what mine are. At some stage fairly soon, it’s going to finish. But at the moment, I’m just going to enjoy every second of it that I can.”

Because, at 39 – and he will turn 40 in the middle of the Royal London Cup – Murtagh is already well into overtime on a brilliant, at times understated career that began with Surrey before peaking at Middlesex, topped with eight years of international action for Ireland.

“This is all bonus territory now,” he says. “If I can keep playing as long as Darren Stevens, I’m not sure, but I’ll give it a good go!”

No one took more County Championship wickets in the last decade and, you sense, few will better his output this time around in 2021, with eight red-ball fixtures lined up before the end of May for the wiliest of operators to exploit.

He won’t play all of them; of that, he is fairly certain, given what he is happy to coin his “advanced years” and the need to rotate a stable of seamers also including established senior pros Steven Finn, Toby Roland-Jones, Tom Helm and James Harris, as well as developing allrounder Martin Andersson and youngsters Ethan Bamber and Blake Cullen.

“I’ve always wanted to play every game,” he stresses, “but I’ve come to the realisation that it’s probably not in my best interest and probably not in the best interest of the team as well. I’ve said to the younger guys that it’s up to them to finish my career! That’s their job. They have to be as brutal as that and get to a stage where the club go: ‘Well, actually the club don’t need you anymore.’”

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A familiar sight - Murtagh bowls during pre-season, with his slip cordon waiting...

Once upon a time, that might have been a frightening thought – the idea of it all coming to an end. But while plenty remains in the tank – Murtagh feels refreshed after the unusual circumstances of last season – there is little on his bucket list that still needs achieving. The pull of another title tilt is one lingering aspiration: Middlesex won the four-day crown in 2016 but have endured four lean, often disappointing seasons since.

He explains: “I think probably as you get older, you get more desperate to win games because you know that you want to enjoy that moment of winning a game as many times as you can, especially a four-day game – nothing beats that feeling.”

Overall though, lockdown offered a dress rehearsal for a post-cricket life: “Finishing isn’t scaring me as much as it used to – maybe the Covid year set me up for that because I was spending a lot more time at home, not doing the job that I could do and have been doing for 20 years.

“It did almost feel a bit like retirement at times last year.”

Yet, it also forged in him a pent-up hunger to return. Just 59 wickets stand between Murtagh and the next milestone of 900 in all first-class cricket, with John Price and Don Bennett both within touching distance on Middlesex’s all-time list, for whom Murtagh has 725 and counting.

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“I think anyone’s a liar if they say they don’t look at numbers and know how many wickets they’ve taken and how many runs they’ve scored,” he chuckles.

But as a selfless, team-first cricketer, he insists that individual landmarks will hold no bearing on decisions around his future. Rather, he would prefer to see more of the incremental progress made since Stuart Law arrived as head coach; Middlesex’s performances in the Bob Willis Trophy were far better than in 2019’s County Championship when only Worcestershire and Leicestershire finished beneath them.

“I just really want to see us develop as a team and get us back into the top division again, have us progress and see these youngsters come in and do well,” he says. “I’d take satisfaction from that, more so than me trying to scrabble to 900 wickets!

“You have to remind yourself that you were a youngster once. For the young players who don’t necessarily quite get what it takes to play at that level for long periods of time, you have to find a way of empathising with that rather than getting frustrated.”

They are the drivers that keep him going and prolong what will one day become inevitable. Even for the rare few – Stevens, Michael Hogan and Ryan ten Doeschate are also among this generation’s great survivors – there is an endpoint. But what delays it is a combination of sheer willpower and unwavering motivation.

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Murtagh even made a surprise appearance in the T20 Blast last year

Murtagh jokes: “I think it’s probably the fear of having to get a proper job and work from nine to five! I still enjoy competing, I still like ruining batsmen’s days. It’s just the fact that we’re doing a job that we love, and I realise how lucky we are to do what we do.

“From a fitness point of view, I don’t feel any different to how I have done for the last 10 years or so.

“I think I still have that same passion and desire that I did when I started, to be honest. I think my style of bowling suits longevity: I’m not particularly quick, I don’t put massive amounts of stress on my body, I’ve been lucky that I’ve barely had many injuries throughout my career that have kept me out for any lengthy period of time. I think staying fit has been the biggest thing for me and managing to play as much cricket as I have done in the last 20 years is something that I’m quite proud of as well.

“There’s no real secret. I know my action these days; I know what I can and can’t do; I focus more on the consistency side of my game than pace and speed – and that was probably the case from quite a young age. I think that has probably helped my longevity.

“I know my limits and I think my consistency has got better year-on-year. It’s weird – I still feel like a 30-year-old and I have to remind myself that I’m coming up to 40 this year. I think I have improved. The knowledge you gain from playing for so long obviously helps and just as the years have gone by, especially over the last 10 years, I’ve felt more in control of what I do with the ball.”

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So, he is looking forward to facing Somerset this year; one of the quirks of the recalibrated County Championship structure is the chance to renew acquaintances with opposition from different divisions. For Murtagh’s side, pitting themselves against last season’s runners-up will provide an early gauge for quite where their ambitions should lie.

Middlesex spent their red-ball campaign at Radlett in 2020, and so news that they are returning to Lord’s this time around will hardly be a source of comfort to opening batsmen, who have grown all too aware of Murtagh’s mastery of the ground’s unique conditions. The intricacies of the famous slope have been one particular friend, while the grandeur of the venue has acted as extra inspiration, not least on the occasion of his Test five-wicket haul for Ireland against England – a day, he says, that brought him full circle at a stadium he has made his own.

“Getting on the honours board was a massive personal achievement,” he reminisces. “To finish on that note was pretty fitting. I’ll never forget that. I remember taking my fifth wicket: the ovation I got down at the far end of the ground was more tingling because I walked back down there to fine leg and the whole bottom end of the ground felt like it was on its feet applauding me.”

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Murtagh leads Ireland off at Lord's after a remarkable five-wicket haul against England in 2019

Aware of the impending rule changes that would class Ireland internationals in county cricket as overseas players, he knew it was likely to be his final appearance before committing himself to Middlesex.

It was a difficult decision, calling time on an opportunity that through the second half of his career had allowed him to travel the world and participate in global tournaments as part of a firecely competitive Irish team. But a loyalty to Angus Fraser, Middlesex’s director of cricket, who never stood in the way of his desire to represent Ireland, meant putting the county first.

At one point last season, he even made an unlikely T20 return, four years after previously turning out in the Vitality Blast. Whether that pattern of events repeats itself in a less exceptional summer is unclear, though typically Murtagh is “open to the possibility of playing that again”.

And such is his entire package, weaving his magic at a far gentler pace than some of his colleagues but with an unrivalled, nagging certainty, it is easy to pinpoint why so many batsmen have fallen at his hurdle.

“I think I’ve seen it before from some batters who are almost out before they are out there, psychologically,” he explains. “Not just from myself, but when our seam attack is bowling at its best, it’s still one of the best in the country. There definitely is a psychological side to that and you play on that as much as you can.”

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He suggests, laughing, that he enjoys coming up against some of the circuit’s talented youngsters, taking on the role of “the cynical old pro who nicks one of them off and writes them off for the rest of their career!”

There is some resonance with that quip in the current state of the game, with Joe Root suggesting following England’s Test series defeat in India that tweaks to county cricket would improve the chances of the national side abroad.

He called for better surfaces that would generate higher scores and encourage sides to utilise their spinners, while also proposing an increase to the number of points handed out for draws in order to incentivise teams to play the long game instead of gambling on seam-dominant pitches.

As far as Murtagh is concerned, Root has a point, even if he recognises that his reputation as a ruthless wicket-taker makes him an unusual ally for a batsman calling for calm. And coming from a county cricket stalwart of his esteem, perhaps it is worth listening.

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Murtagh will turn 40 in August - how long can he go on?

“I think pitches in recent years have favoured bowlers too much in the county game,” he admits. “It probably sounds a bit strange saying that, but I enjoy the challenge of a good wicket.

“Obviously, you don’t want it to be too flat that it’s 500 plays 500, but I think some of the games we’ve played in which have been over in two days or teams being bowled out for 80, it might look good on your figures and feel like a good confidence booster for yourself, but I don’t think that’s doing the game much good in the long term.

“I think pitch standards have got to improve. It’s nice in England – we’ve always had a variety of wickets: you go to Taunton and you’re going to be playing on a spinning one, you go up north early season and it’s going to nip around and be seam-friendly. I don’t think you ever want to take that side out of the game, but I agree.

“I think we need to look at trying to produce as good a wicket as we can. That might not be possible all the time, with the amount of cricket played – I think that’s probably the biggest factor. So much is asked of groundsmen these days in terms of the number of games and the number of wickets they have to prepare, so I know it’s not always possible.

“There is some validity to what [Root] is saying and I think that in recent years the ball has been on top of the bat probably a bit too much. Going back 10 or 15 years though, it was the other way around. These things go in cycles and I’m sure it will be readdressed.”

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It will take more than that, though, for Tim Murtagh’s threat to fade away. He remains as potent as ever, even into his 40th year, ready once again to do what he does best.

“I know that it’s not going to last for much longer, so I’m going to enjoy it until it does finish,” he says. “It’s just that inner drive and inner desire to want to do well and see the team do well and want to push for trophies and still win another trophy if I can before I retire and leave the team in a good place when I do finish.”

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