Chilton and Law bat out the draw

Lancashire 236 and 401 for 7 dec (Chilton 103, Law 91) drew with Middlesex 338 (Strauss 95) and 41 for 0
Scorecard

"Thanks to the players for such a great contest," said the PA as the teams retreated to the pavilion at 5.30pm. To be fair, he was only reading his script, but the heavy irony was obvious to those few spectators who had witnessed this game wheezing its last yesterday evening. When Middlesex declared seven overs after tea and went in needing a nominal 300 runs from 20 overs, the funeral buffet was already over.

Middlesex began the day looking fairly inert; fielders stood by and watched as balls went to the boundary, mostly off the bat of Stuart Law, and later in the day David Nash suffered the exquisite embarrassment of dropping Kyle Hogg after he had already started celebrating the wicket - he collided with first slip in his exuberance. And it wasn't just the fielders who were sleepy; the pitch had lost its vim too, and the bowlers found the middle of the bat more often than the edge.

Lancashire's decision to bat out the game didn't make for a fascinating spectacle, but Mark Chilton, whose innings yesterday was so low-risk it should have had a Standard and Poor rating, offered a few more strokes today. He brought up his 50 in the first full over of the day with a boundary and, with Loye, drove the wayward Paul Hutchison out of the attack after only five overs.

Middlesex have seen Chilton in accumulating mode before. Last season, he scored centuries in both Championship matches between the counties. So did Stuart Law. In fact, Chilton and Law's stand of 264 at Lord's was the highest for any wicket against Middlesex. Their 113 in this match is piffling by comparison, although all credit to Law for breathing some excitement back into the game with his innings of 91. It included two sixes off Paul Weekes - the first hoisted over the deep-midwicket fielder, the second when Weekes dropped short, hooked high into the Mound Stand. Still, Weekes had some compensation with the wicket of Chilton in the same over, clipping a ball off his toes to square leg.

Lance Klusener, who seemed almost solely accountable for Middlesex's poor over-rate yesterday with his sluggish amble back to his mark, made amends today. Not only did he take four wickets in his second spell, but he shook off Middlesex's impending point deduction with a spell of medium-pacers off a short run-up. And he wasn't the only one making up for lost time. The sun, so fickle in her attentions over the last three days, finally played a blinder on the last day. She coaxed the jackets off even the most frigid of spectators.