County Championship Preview: Middlesex
Middlesex have pulled themselves back into Division One but with a paper thin Spin department can they hold on?
Middlesex have finally pulled themselves out of division 2 after they fell there after imploding the season after they won the County Championship.
But injuries to their top players and performance drop-offs have finally subsided and a new team has arisen and pulled themselves back up.
Their Batting was led by Wicketkeeper John Simpson and Opener Mark Stoneman who both scored over 1000 runs last season but the true standout player was Tom Helm who scored only 207 runs but at 51 and took 29 wickets at 22 bowling genuinely quick.
Keeping him injury free will be very important. There has been very little movement with Nathan Sowter leaving for Durham and Ryan Higgins coming in from Gloucestershire.
They have former Protea Pieter Malan joining them as an Overseas and he will likely open next to Stoneman but having former England player Toby Roland-Jones injury free finally will be a massive boost as he took 67 wickets at 18 last year showing he hasn’t lost his quality through repeated bad injuries.
They might have to scrape together a middle order to just score some consistent runs but if they can they could be in for a good return to the top level.
They could truly go full on BatDeep to fix their Middle-Order and rely on their talented bowlers to find the magic to get results.
Predicted Line-Up:
Mark Stoneman
Sam Robson
Pieter Malan
Max Holden
Stephen Eskinazi
John Simpson
Ryan Higgins
Tom Helm
Toby Roland-Jones
Ethan Bamber
Tim Murtagh
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