Toby Roland-Jones and Tim Murtagh could both claim to be county cricket’s most valuable player after a heady week that has seen Middlesex surge to the top of the Specsavers County Championship.
Roland-Jones and Murtagh took six wickets apiece, three in each innings, in Middlesex’s magnificent victory against champions Yorkshire at Scarborough, besides also featuring in the rollicking ninth wicket stand of 123 to set alight a match that had seemed destined to be a draw.
As a result, Roland-Jones has moved into second place in the PCA’s overall Most Valuable Player rankings for this season, behind Worcestershire’s Joe Leach, and is in good enough form with bat and ball – across all formats – to win top spot by the end of the campaign. In the MVP rankings, too, championship first division achievements carry more weight than performances in the second tier, giving 28-year-old fast bowler Roland-Jones added ammunition to overtake Leach.
During his career, meanwhile, Roland-Jones averages 19 MVP points per championship game, which is higher than Murtagh’s 18 per four-day match even though the 34-year-old seamer is the leading player in the history of the championship’s MVP rankings, which were launched in 2007.
Murtagh has racked up 2,456 championship points over the last nine and a half years and, moreover, has played in 136 from a possible 153 four-day appearances since the start of 2007 – an average of 15.2 championship games per season and testament to his enduring fitness levels as an opening bowler.
So far this summer Roland-Jones has scored 268 runs and taken 47 wickets across all formats, and will get his chance to add to those tallies when Middlesex host Glamorgan in an important NatWest T20 Blast south group fixture at Richmond tomorrow evening.
Glamorgan are currently second in the group table, with 13 points from just eight games, while Middlesex – banishing their poor T20 form of the last two years – lie in fourth with nine points from eight matches.
Middlesex welcome back their T20 captain Dawid Malan, absent at Scarborough because he was a member of England’s squad for Tuesday’s T20 international against Sri Lanka, but may be without Eoin Morgan, who dislocated a finger in England’s win at the Ageas Bowl.
Fast bowler Steven Finn is also unavailable ahead of England’s opening Test against Pakistan next week, but Middlesex head coach Richard Scott said: “It’s good news to have Dawid back, and even if we don’t have Morgan and Finn we will still be strong and competitive and are looking forward to the challenge.
“The South Group is very tight and this is a massive game for us. Glamorgan are going very well in the competition and we want to win in order to maintain our good position in the table.”