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How the game played outRangpur Riders picked up their first win in the BPL, after beating Khulna Titans by eight runs in a contest that was alive until the penultimate ball of the match. Farhad Reza defended 20 runs in the last over, keeping Carlos Brathwaite quiet.Paul Stirling’s 61 off 46 balls had put the Titans in a strong position chasing 170, but his dismissal in the 14th over, and captain Mahmudullah’s in the 18th over, put them under pressure in the last two overs.The Riders, after being bowled out for 98 in the first game, corrected their batting strategy significantly, despite losing Mehedi Maruf in the fourth over. They lost two more wickets by the tenth over before Rossouw and Bopara put on the game’s most important partnership, adding an unbroken 104 for the fourth wicket.Rossouw struck eight fours and two sixes, both off Ali Khan in the 16th over, while Bopara, who made 44 in the first game, struck three fours and a six in his unbeaten 40 off 29 balls.Turning points

• Rossouw and Bopara blast 67 off the last five overs, including 21 off Carlos Brathwaite’s 18th.
• Stirling and Junaid Siddique propel Titans to 85 for no loss in 10 overs.
• Stirling falls to Mashrafe Mortaza in the 14th over with his side still needing 62 off 41 balls.
• Mahmudullah falls with Titans needing 30 off the last 14 balls.

Star of the dayRossouw exacted revenge on the Titans, for whom he had made 187 runs in nine innings in last season’s BPL. This was his first fifty in the competition too – he paced himself initially before launching into the big shots in the last few overs.The big missAfter removing Ariful Haque off the first ball of the penultimate over of the Titans innings, Shafiul Islam conceded 10 runs off the rest of the over, including three consecutive wides.Where the teams standRangpur’s first win, especially after a poor performance in the first game, comes as a significant confidence builder.

Karnataka surged ahead after an up-and-down day in their Ranji Trophy semi-final against Saurashtra, with Shreyas Gopal and Abhimanyu Mithun the unlikely batting heroes.Karnataka ended the third day 237 for 8, stretching their lead to 276 runs. Shreyas, the top innings scorer for the second time in the match, was batting on composed 61, while Mithun had played an equally good hand to end the day batting on 35. Their stand of 61 has been the only half-century stand for Karnataka so far in their second innings. It has spanned 25.5 overs and 118 minutes, and the last hour of it must have been morale-sapping for Saurashtra.If Saurashtra are to win this, they will have to make the highest score of the match to win, in the fourth innings. It’s a daunting ask, but in their favour is the fact that they’re fresh off a record chase in their quarter-final against Uttar Pradesh.However, Karnataka will be more upbeat at the end of day three, given how well their bowlers did in the first innings and the fact that the pitch is far from easy to bat on. Uneven bounce has been in evidence, and the spinners have got the odd ball to grip and turn considerably. Moreover, the hosts will have got a considerable lift from how the last session went for them. K Gowtham fell to the first ball of the session, but thereafter Saurashtra had no success. When Karnataka were 176 for 8 with their lead 215, Saurashtra might have been hopeful of chasing something in the region of 230. However, Shreyas and Mithun ensured it wouldn’t be quite as straightforward as that.Shreyas didn’t hesitate to skip down the track when the ball was given air, and was confident in going over the top. He was equally good square of the wicket on either side. Mithun for his part showed he wouldn’t need to be shielded from the strike, dealing with the Saurashtra bowlers confidently.Karnataka seemed to have conceded the upper hand after gaining it in the morning. Mithun took two wickets in his first over and Ronit More then finished off Saurashtra’s innings at 236, giving Karnataka a 39-run first-innings lead.They were building on that lead steadily and had reached 80 for 3 at lunch with Mayank Agarwal and Manish Pandey at the crease. Agarwal had started nervily, surviving a dropped catch in the eighth over, when he was on 11. Chetan Sakariya had troubled Agarwal in the first innings, and continued to bowl a searching line in the second. He was unlucky that a close lbw shout went against him – he had suffered the same in the first innings too – but he put that behind him to draw an edge that flew to Arpit Vasavada at first slip at knee height. The ball popped in and out.Agarwal and Pandey both seemed to have settled thereafter, but Dharmendrasinh Jadeja broke the game open post lunch. He had Pandey pushing down the wrong line, not accounting for the drift, to be hit on the pad in line with off stump. Six overs later, he bowled a ripper to Agarwal that dipped, gripped and turned past his bat to cannon into the stumps. It was a dream dismissal for a left-arm spinner, and at 108 for 5 Karnataka looked very uncertain.Jadeja would bowl a marathon spell of 23 overs – split by the lunch and tea intervals – and the wicket of Gowtham was his 50th of the season. But although he remained a constant threat, as did the rest of the bowlers for the first two sessions, the obduracy and sparkle of the ninth-wicket stand meant Karnataka had established a firm advantage in the match.

Heather Knight, England’s captain, had talked up their squad depth ahead of the ODI series against India, but the side faltered in the first bout on the face of some superb bowling by India’s pacers and Ekta Bisht. The left-arm spinner picked up four wickets in the middle of a collapse – England lost seven wickets for 25 runs – as India took a 1-0 lead with an emphatic 66-run win while defending 202 at Wankhede Stadium.Put in to bat, India started slowly and set themselves up with a 69-run opening stand between Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues, before they slid to 95 for 5. Mithali Raj, batting at No. 4, shored up the inexperienced middle order with a 74-ball 44. The final kick came courtesy Jhulan Goswami’s 37-ball 30 to give India’s bowlers something to defend.In reply, England couldn’t really get off the blocks and kept losing wickets. It started with Shikha Pandey trapping Amy Jones plumb with a nip-backer in her first over. Sarah Taylor, returning from an anxiety-related issue that forced her out of the World T20, scratched around to make a 31-ball 10 before falling to a superb inswinger from Pandey. With no DRS in place, England were a tad unlucky as replays indicated the swing may have taken it down leg.Deepti Sharma chipped in with Tammy Beaumont’s wicket before the repair work came about through a 73-run fourth-wicket stand between Knight and Natalie Sciver.The pair received a reprieve each along the way, denying Poonam Yadav a wicket in the first and the last ball of the 25th over. Knight, on 22, mistimed a pull off Poonam to midwicket, where Bisht stuck her left hand out but was unable to cling on. Sciver, meanwhile, flashed hard at a legbreak that flew past wicketkeeper Taniya Bhatia.Sophie Ecclestone was the best of the England bowlers•Getty Images

Bisht, however, made up for the lapse with a superb effort off her own bowling in the 31st over. Knight’s leading edge went over to Bisht rather innocuously, but with Sciver having backed up too far down the pitch, Bisht had enough time to collect it and run the non-striker out with a back-hand flip. This proved to be a huge moment in the game. With England needing 90 off 18 overs with six wickets in hand, Bisht took centre stage by completing a triple-wicket over in the 41st to cap off a collapse.”The total was perfectly chaseable,” Knight said after the game. “We bowled well, but were unlucky not to take more wickets up front. But we were more than happy with 200 to chase. It was sticky, it turned, but once you got to play 15-20 balls it became easier to play shots. The first 10-15 balls were the key. I don’t think we played it particularly well today. The pitch started to turn and deteriorated too. There was inconsistent spin as well which makes it harder.”Earlier, India’s middle-order woes resurfaced, albeit not as telling in manner as in the T20Is in New Zealand. It’s perhaps with the knowledge that the middle order, especially with Harmanpreet Kaur missing, is a tad brittle that their openers started cautiously, with the first six overs producing just 11.Those weren’t without drama, though. There was some raucous lbw appeals from the experienced pace pair of Katherine Brunt and Anya Shrubsole. Rodrigues cut loose in the eighth over, flicking Shrubsole for two wristy fours. She countered the early movement deftly, picking the gaps for quick singles and eight well-timed fours in total.Mandhana, however, didn’t look her fluent best, beaten at least thrice by Shrubsole, before chopping on while attempting to pull Georgia Elwiss in the 16th over. Coming in at No. 3, Deepti became the first of left-arm spinner Sophie Ecclestone’s two victims thanks to some top-notch glovework from Taylor.Ecclestone, the leading wicket-taker in the ODI series against India last year, denied Rodrigues a half-century as she popped up a return catch with a top edge. Harleen Deol, the batting allrounder who replaced the injured Harmanpreet, made an eight-ball two on her international debut.One ball later, Mona Meshram, who had sat out all six matches across formats during the tour of New Zealand, was adjudged lbw, although the inswinger appeared to have struck her slightly high on the knee-roll. Thanks to Sciver’s double-strike, India had lost half their side for 95 inside 22 overs. Meshram’s dismissal capped a 42-ball frame during which India lost five wickets for 26 runs.Raj, meanwhile, held up one end and forged a 54-run stand with Bhatia, whose 41-ball 25 helped India inch closer to 150. But after Raj fell in the 42nd over, it was largely down to handy knocks from Pandey and, especially, Goswami that India went past 200. Goswami followed a six and a four with a brace before holing out with two balls remaining. By then, she had done enough to give England a good run for their money.

Australia chased down the fifth-highest target in ODIs on Sunday in Mohali, probably their favourite ground in India having won some memorable matches including the 1996 World Cup semi-final against West Indies and the thrilling chase in the third ODI of the 2013 series. That chase of 304 was engineered by James Faulkner, and more than five years later, Ashton Turner stunned Virat Kohli’s men who also had to battle the dew in addition to several muffed chances in the field. While reviewing the defeat, Kohli said towards the end of the post-match presentation that DRS “was not consistent at all” and that a review that didn’t go India’s way was a “game-changer” moment. Here’s what all he said at the presentation:On what went wrong“The wicket remained good throughout. We’ve been on the wrong side of the dew twice in two games, but that’s not an excuse. Especially with five down, giving 10 runs an over in the end was a bit of a harsh pill to swallow, but, look, it was very difficult to bowl in the end. The guys tried their best, but Ashton played a hell of a knock. [Peter] Handscomb played a really good innings too, to hold the innings together. [Usman] Khawaja was good again, but I think Ashton was the gamechanger.”If he took dew into account while opting to bat“[In the] last game we were told there was going to be dew, we were on the wrong side of that. We had a good wicket to bat on, [and] Australia would have done the same. So, again they just played better again in the second innings, and that’s something you just have to accept. It’s a record chase for them and they deserved to win in the end. So we wanted to bat first anyway. It was never a confusion in our minds, we wanted to bat first anyway.”On delaying the introduction of Yuzvendra Chahal (the legspinner came on to bowl after 19 overs when Australia were 105 for 2)“We had to get the fifth bowler out of the way. If Kedar [Jadhav] and Vijay [Shankar] were bowling with the dew, it was going to be even more difficult. It was always going to be tough for the bowlers who are not specialist bowlers, so we wanted to get the 10 overs out of the way first. We backed Chahal to bowl. He is a wristspinner and they go get some purchase off the pitch. But in the end, you can see it even standing now, it became too wet to bowl and just those last three-four overs for everyone was the difficult part. I think the first part of the bowling was fine, and they did a pretty good job. But in the end they were going pretty hard, and it was difficult to bowl in the right areas.”On how damaging the fielding goof-ups were“Yeah, crucial. We were sloppy in the field. We were not at our best, and we should have grabbed those chances and made the most of the opportunity when it came by. But the DRS call (when Turner was ruled not out on review for a caught behind when he was on 41 and Australia still needed 66 from 39 deliveries) as well, was a bit of a surprise for all of us. It’s becoming more of a talking point every game. It’s just not consistent at all, and that was a game-changer moment as well. But yeah, that’s more of an uncontrollable, but the controllable we had to do right, and we didn’t do it right, and the opportunity slipped away.”

Big picture

No one has elicited fear quite like Andre Russell and Hardik Pandya in IPL 2019. After an epic face-off at Eden Gardens, where Hardik’s late heroics with the bat were pipped by Russell’s all-round show, the stage is set for round two and the venue couldn’t have been a better one.Wankhede Stadium has seen 874 sixes hit, the second most for any ground in IPL history. Russell hits a four every 2.4 balls, Hardik every 3.2. The difference in their balls per six is greater as Hardik hits one every 6.3 balls, while Russell takes just 3.7 balls to clear the ropes. How both captains and bowlers try to minimise the damage against these two gun batsmen on a fast-scoring ground would make for compelling viewing.

Form guide (last three games, most recent first)

Mumbai Indians: won the one over eliminator v Sunrisers, lost to Knight Riders by 34 runs, beat Super Kings by 46 runs
Knight Riders: beat Kings XI by seven wickets, beat Mumbai by 34 runs, lost to Royals by three wickets

Bowling has been a major issue for Knight Riders, despite the two recent wins – over Mumbai at home and Kings XI away. While Sandeep Warrier has been a good addition with the new ball, compared to Mumbai, they still leak runs at a higher economy rate in all three phases of the game: Powerplay, seven to 15 and the last five. They were smashed recently by Sam Curran in Mohali, as the last four went for 51.What might encourage them is the success spinners have had at Wankhede lately. Knight Riders have the pair of Shimron Hetmyer and Gurkeerat Singh to thank for keeping their hopes alive. With Royal Challengers Bangalore beating Sunrisers Hyderabad in Bengaluru on Saturday night, the equation is simple: Knight Riders need to win on Sunday, the margin is irrelevant. Should they slip up, though, Sunrisers will go through with a higher net run rate. For Mumbai, a win will clinch a top-two finish, ensuring that they have two shots at making the final, the first of those in Chennai where they haven’t lost since 2011.Dinesh Karthik and Andre Russell have a chat•BCCI

Previous meeting

Knight Riders snapped a six-match losing streak after the promotions of Shubman Gill and Andre Russell up the order worked wonders. They posted 232 and had Mumbai on the mat before Hardik Pandya blazed to a 34-ball 91 that had Mumbai believing briefly. Russell picked up two wickets with the ball in addition to his 40-ball unbeaten 80 as Knight Riders won by 34 runs.

Likely XIs

Mumbai Indians: 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Quinton de Kock, 3 Suryakumar Yadav, 4 Evin Lewis/Ben Cutting, 5 Hardik Pandya, 6 Kieron Pollard, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Rahul Chahar, 9 Jasprit Bumrah, 10 Lasith Malinga, 11 Barinder SranKnight Riders: 1 Chris Lynn, 2 Shubman Gill, 3 Robbie Uthappa, 4 Dinesh Karthik, 5 Andre Russell, 6 Nitish Rana, 7 Rinku Singh, 8 Sunil Narine, 9 Piyush Chawla, 10 Harry Gurney, 11 Sandeep Warrier

Strategy punt

• Russell hasn’t been tested enough against left-arm pacers this season and Mumbai have three of those to choose from. Since 2015, Russell has fallen five times to left-arm pace in just 54 deliveries in IPLs. To that end, Mumbai could consider roping in one of Jason Behrendorff or Beuran Hendricks in place of Lasith Malinga, in addition to Barinder Sran, who played the last match.
• Mumbai’s top three; Rohit Sharma, Quinton de Kock and Suryakumar Yadav have all fallen to the pull shot regularly since last season: 6, 7 and 7 times. With the extra bounce available at the Wankhede, Knight Riders could consider bolstering their pace attack by including Lockie Ferguson instead of Harry Gurney, who relies more on cutters.
• Mumbai have won six of the nine matches in which they have batted first this season. Their bowlers have shown to be more adept at defending targets: concede only 7.7 RPO as compared to 10.2 when bowling first, average 21.9 runs per wicket as against 42.8 bowling first, and strike every 17 deliveries vs 25.3 bowling first. But can they afford to bat first against Knight Riders, who have the best record in run chases this season, having won four out of five matches?

Stats that matter

• Suryakumar Yadav has the seventh-worst batting average for players with over 200 runs this season: 24.33. Furthermore, he has repeatedly squandered starts, with just one fifty in 13 matches.
• Knight Riders’ fate has often been decided by their bowling performance in the Powerplay. When they have gone for over nine runs an over during that period, they have gone on to lose all three matches. Conversely, when they have conceded less than seven runs an over in the Powerplay, they have won three of the four matches.
• Andre Russell needs 34 runs to reach 5000 in T20s
• Rohit Sharma needs four sixes for 100 sixes in IPL as a captain
• This will be Rohit’s 150th match for Mumbai Indians
• Dinesh Karthik needs two more catches to reach 150 in T20s

Warwickshire bade a temporary farewell to their Headquarters after play, with the ICC ready to move in and begin its rebranding of Edgbaston as a World Cup venue. Higher profile games await, contested by more familiar names with greater hype and richer reward. But don’t assume that any of the internationals will be as tense or passionately-contested as stages of this Championship fixture.Hands were shaken at five to six when Warwickshire accepted that time had run out on their push for success. By that stage, Nottinghamshire had opened a lead of 60 runs with two wickets in hand and only five overs remaining. Enough batsmen played with a resolution altogether missing in their first innings. While Jeetan Patel continued to wheel away and wickets fell in clusters, Wednesday’s wholesale collapse was not to be repeated.Nor was the worst of the behaviour. Steven Mullaney, the Nottinghamshire captain, confirmed that his side had received a Level One warning for their conduct and it would be surprising if individual sanctions did not follow against at least one player. “I think the game was played hard, very hard and there were a couple of incidents that would have been borderline,” he admitted.Both Mullaney and Jim Troughton, the Warwickshire first team coach, could not suppress wry smiles when asked whether proceedings had been more feisty than usual. “It was an enjoyable game,” Troughton said. “There were some emotions, some frustrations flying around. Bowlers are grumpy old things and I don’t think that should be taken away.”A heavy morning shower lopped five overs off the quota to make the task slightly easier for Nottinghamshire. Their second-wicket pair of Ben Duckett and Chris Nash eased back into the groove with cheap early runs and it was not until the 75th over, by which time they had added 199, that Warwickshire broke through. Four wickets then fell for 16 runs, but Mullaney and Tom Moores rebuilt before themselves falling in successive overs. New batsmen tended to fall through early-innings footwork; once set they could hold firm.Duckett proved a great example. His travails as an England player against R Ashwin seemed a distant memory as he thwarted Patel, getting behind the ball rather than pushing without a second line of defence. Across his career he has tended to clear up mess rather than avoid it altogether and his 140 from 237 balls in just shy of five hours did most to undo the damage first time around.England still have him on the radar; he made his T20 international debut only last month. Here, the man sometimes known as the Pocket Rocket was just as much the Pocket Block-It, mixing the trademark cuts that come relatively easily to players of his short build with patience and discretion. At the other end, Nash (85) was steadiness personified and gave an object lesson in playing pace late and with light hands.It took a brilliant, left-handed catch at short leg by Sam Hain to remove Duckett, giving Patel his second wicket of the innings. Number three soon followed, Will Rhodes reacting quickly at slip to account for Joe Clarke. Hain then took his fifth catch of the match with the second new ball in play to complete a miserable comeback for Samit Patel, whose place in the Nottinghamshire side must again be up for discussion.Much rested now on Nash, but he inexplicably missed one from Henry Brookes to become a clear leg-before victim. Although Patel returned to the attack with the ball only eight overs old, the surface did not offer the bounce or pace of turn that he wanted. Even so, the wicket of Mullaney represented his 22nd in the past two games. Figures of 10 for 88 usually belong to a winner. Not this time.Both sides ultimately left with reason for hope. “It was an incredible effort from us, from one through to eleven,” Troughton said. “They showed the brand of cricket they should pride themselves on for the rest of the season.” Ryan Sidebottom is due to return to second team action next week and Olly Stone should be fit by the end of the month. But Ian Bell is making a slower recovery than expected from foot surgery and is due to see a specialist on Friday.Mullaney bristled at a suggestion that Nottinghamshire had lacked bravery in the first innings. Instead, he thought, the loss of early wickets to bad strokes had simply opened a door for the home side. “We have not batted well enough since the first game of the season against Yorkshire, we know that, but hopefully [our second innings] will turn things around,” he said. It needs to; they remain bottom of the table.The crowd was small but constant through the day, determined to savour every minute in the knowledge that their side will not return until July 21 and then under the T20 moniker of Birmingham Bears. Three solitary figures sat as far apart as seemed possible in the Eric Hollies stand, as though part of a geometric exercise to construct the biggest triangle in the vast expanse of seating. Yesterday it was a place of quiet contemplation. Three weeks on Sunday, England and India will meet here. It will be cacophonous.

Gloucestershire pair Chris Dent and Gareth Roderick both made half-centuries between the showers but their Specsavers County Championship match against Sussex is heading towards a draw.Only 49 overs in two sessions were possible on the third day at Arundel Castle, with Gloucestershire reaching 146 for 3 in reply to Sussex’s 351 for 8. With just a day left a stalemate looks certain, which would at least keep Sussex in the top three promotion places in Division Two.Umpires Ian Blackwell and Neil Bainton took the players off again at 5pm because of light drizzle and play was abandoned at 5.40pm. So far, 123 overs have been lost to rain during the match.Dent made 851 runs and was Gloucestershire’s leading run scorer in the Championship last season but his 59 on a slow pitch was only his second half-century of the season.After the early loss of Miles Hammond, Dent shared stands of 60 with James Bracey and Roderick, who was unbeaten on 51 when the rain returned an hour after play had resumed at 4pm following a three-hour delay.Dent will have been disappointed with his dismissal. On a slow pitch he had survived one escape when he was dropped at third slip by Luke Wells off Ollie Robinson. He had moved onto 59 when he chased a ball from Chris Jordan down the leg side and Sussex wicketkeeper Ben Brown dived to his right to pull off a good catch. Dent faced 141 balls and hit eight fours.Roderick did the bulk of the scoring in the hour after the resumption and his 88-ball half-century included six boundaries.Earlier, Sussex had declared on their overnight score of 351 for 8 after rain had wiped out two sessions on the second day. Robinson was a handful with the new ball and was rewarded in his second over when he moved one away from Hammond who edged to third slip where Danny Briggs took a good catch.Robinson’s progress was being monitored by England scout Geoff Arnold, with a view to a possible call-up for England Lions’ match against Australia A next month.He would have been celebrating again in his second spell had Wells held on when Dent was on 46. Instead, David Wiese took the second wicket when Bracey, who had played well for his 21, chased a wide delivery and slapped it into Briggs’s hands at point.

Middlesex 172 and 96 for 3 (Higgins 3-16) lead Gloucestershire 201 (Higgins 61*, Roland-Jones 7-52) by 67 runsToby Roland-Jones claimed career-best bowling figures on day two of Middlesex’s County Championship game with Gloucester at Merchant Taylors’ School.However, former Seaxe Ryan Higgins produced crucial contributions with bat and ball to leave the visitors still ahead of the game at stumps.Roland-Jones turned back the clock to claim 7 for 52 as Gloucestershire were bowled out for 201, a score bolstered by Higgins’ combative 61 not out.And the all-rounder, who left the Lord’s tenants at the end of the 2017 season, then took 3 for 16 to reduce the hosts to 96 for 3 in their second innings, a lead of just 67.It had been almost three years since Roland-Jones had taken five wickets in an innings – the last occasion being the Seaxes famous last-day of the season championship-clinching win over Yorkshire.A Test call-up followed and at the end of the 2017 season, the right-arm seamer was on the verge of an Ashes call-up – a dream ruined when he was diagnosed with a stress fracture of the back.A winter’s rehab appeared to have done the trick only for him to break down again in just the second game of the 2018 campaign, so missing the rest of the season. He returned at the start of this season, but the early signs hadn’t been good – just five wickets at 101-apiece.However, here Roland-Jones looked a man transformed, building on his two wickets on the first evening with three more in a devastating nine-ball mid-morning burst.Sending Gloucestershire skipper Chris Dent’s off-stump cartwheeling backwards was the perfect fillip for a fast bowler in need of a change of fortune. As it turned out it was only the start.The fourth ball of his next over saw Ben Charlesworth nick one into the hands of Middlesex skipper Dawid Malan at slip and Benny Howell, so often the scourge of the hosts, lasted just two balls before he edged another to the gloves of John Simpson.Tim Murtagh, back in Middlesex colours after his international stint with Ireland, then removed the obdurate Gareth Roderick lbw for 40 make lunch that bit more indigestible for Dent’s side.’Ro-JO’ as he’s affectionately known wasn’t out of the action for long, returning early in the afternoon to have Graeme van Buuren brilliantly taken at first slip by Stevie Eskinazi, two-handed just millimetres from the floor.When Tom Helm had David Payne caught at slip by Malan, Gloucestershire were still 27 in arrears, but Higgins struck six boundaries en route to an excellent fifty.Josh Shaw proved a great ally in a ninth-wicket stand of 43, before Roland-Jones trapped him lbw to secure the amendment to his career stats.By the time last man Chadd Sayers fell to Nathan Sowter for a duck, Higgins had secured a batting point – and he hadn’t finished haunting his former employers.When the hosts began their second dig immediately after tea, Sam Robson and Eskinazi survived a testing period of playing and missing to wipe out the arrears with an opening stand of 53.Higgins, though, took ball in hand to break the stand, finding the edge of Robson’s bat for Miles Hammond to snaffle the catch at slip.One brought two as Higgins struck again soon afterwards, Eskinazi getting a thin edge through to wicketkeeper Roderick who was standing up to the stumps. And when Higgins bowled Gubbins in his next over Middlesex were back in trouble just 44 ahead.Malan and George Scott dug in before fading light drove the players off seven overs early. An intriguing day three awaits.