Stephen Eskinazi delivers amid feast of outground carnage

Radlett: Middlesex 229-9, Gloucestershire 199-9 - Middlesex win by 30 runs

Scorecard

"Never seen an outfield this fast. Ever. And I play at Eden Park."

Glenn Phillips was standing motionless at long-on, hands on hips and understandably dumfounded, when he turned to Radlett's temporary media gazebo and said what everyone was thinking. There are plenty of small grounds in New Zealand, and there are plenty of excellent pitches too, but rarely perhaps with so much conspiring at once against the bowling team: wind assistance, a rock-hard outfield and a downslope wherever you looked.

There were nine fours in the first three overs of the match, and Middlesex were 89 for 1 at the end of the powerplay. When Stephen Eskinazi was third man out – for 87 in just 37 deliveries – there were still eight overs remaining. He isn't one of the domestic game's biggest hitters, but he played the surroundings to perfection, picked the gaps and held his shape.

"I think it's the way people prepare, isn't it?" he said afterwards. "For three weeks leading up, you put the bowling machine on 72mph and whack it over the sightscreen, but then you rock up here – and you actually get more of an indication when you're a fielder – and you think: 'The ball has to literally beat me by half a yard, and it's away.'

"So, experience-wise what's helped me here massively is taking what's on offer for the first 12 balls, and then if that doesn't work go to your other options. It's difficult when you're chasing 230 because you don't feel like you've got that freedom. But for me, it's a case of: can I hit my drives, can I hit my clips and cuts? If that's not working, then I'll have a slog."

He never had to reach for that alternative. If there is a better player on the county circuit without a Hundred deal, then he has not made himself known.

On that subject, Eskinazi has always been publicly phlegmatic, even if he readily admits to his disappointment at the time.

"I think something I've worked on mentally a lot over the last couple of years is making sure I take care of my side of things," he explained. "I'm certainly not batting out there thinking of anything other than slapping the ball for four or six.

"I've seen so many people go through the ringer of being so disappointed when things like that happen. But I don't take it as a personal attack or a comment on my game. It's an opportunity to keep learning and keep improving. It just says to me that I have a bit of work to do. Hopefully, I can take myself from one of the better players in the country to somewhere near the best."

^{Middlesex and Gloucestershire have often shared plenty of outground runs in the T20 Blast (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)}

Even so, Gloucestershire would leave a little frustrated; so much has to go right in a chase like that, but their imposing top six didn't get going, and yet they ended just 30 runs short, doing plenty to arrest any potential damage to their net run rate. Some of the day's biggest sixes came off the bats of Naseem Shah and Paul van Meekeren.

For those reasons – and many more - outground cricket is a different beast. "It's tough," said Jack Taylor, Gloucestershire's captain. "There just wasn't really a dimension that you could go to. Even the longer side, dead square, is pretty short and the outfield is rapid. So, there are some big pockets and they ran twos. But they played really well."

It's nothing he's not used to either, being a regular each year at the Cheltenham festival. But this is the 20th year of the T20 Blast, and few fixtures historically have summoned such carnage.

When these two teams last met on this ground, Dawid Malan was unbeaten on 91 as the rain fell. When they came together at Uxbridge in 2011, Gloucestershire passed 250. Even if they'd chased this target – 230 on an increasingly blustery, baltic evening – it would only have been their third-highest total in this head-to-head's storied history.

For a while, that target looked like being plenty more. Eskinazi was the second-highest run-scorer in the competition in 2020, and he finished eighth last year despite missing a clutch of matches to injury. This marked his first-team return following a thumb fracture, and he had continued from where he left off in his only other appearance in 2022 – a County Championship hundred on the season's opening day against Derbyshire.

That he isn't enlisted for The Hundred is both a statistical nonsense but also a symbol of the outrageous depth in the English game's white-ball hitting. Not long ago, Eskinazi was red-ball first, part of the line-up that won the title in 2016. His reinvention has been quietly spectacular, to the point that he has become indisputably Middlesex's main man as the likes of Malan and Paul Stirling have moved on.

^{Eoin Morgan featured for Middlesex (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)}

This was his first game as the county's permanent skipper in the Blast, replacing Eoin Morgan, whose presence here was much a sideshow as could possibly be for a World Cup-winning England captain. But he still under the radar contributed a crucial hand.

In his first competitive match since January's T20I series in the Caribbean, Morgan eased himself in and never appeared to fully get going. But such was the order of the day, one six off Benny Howell hit a car and another was thudded over long-off.

Perhaps it says much for Middlesex's history in this competition – generously speaking, they have been mostly woeful since winning in 2008 – that a sense of trepidation among the home faithful forever existed that there might be a sting in the tail. It can't have happened often that 229 for 9 has felt like a missed opportunity of sorts.

Arguably, Eskinazi's departure was followed by a spell in which too much emphasis was put on clearing the ropes, when actually the clue was in hitting the gaps and letting the outfield do its thing – like a golfer bunting down the fairway and watching it scuttle onto the edge of the green. It was noticeable that even on a postage stamp for professional cricketers, there were seven sixes and 26 fours in Middlesex's innings. Phillips has seen plenty of T20 cricket, and he wasn't lying.

In a sense, of course, it was hard not to feel as though all this deserved a greater audience. Even in defeat, Gloucestershire are one of the better sides in this tournament – they were semi-finalists in 2020 and should have made it out of their group last year. Eskinazi's knock certainly merited more eyeballs.

But with England at Lord's next week, Middlesex had little option, though the schedulers might have moved this game to Bristol. The 4.30pm start, which meant there were couldn't have been more than 1,500 spectators in the ground, was designed to counter the farce of last summer when bad light ruined a tight finish.

It couldn't have been much brighter this time around as the clouds closed in. The only difference was the state of play, and Middlesex had long since earned their win.

Related Topics

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