Century joy for Joyce

Ed Joyce hit his first LV County Championship hundred of the season as Middlesex reached 285 for six in their Division Two game against Leicestershire at Lord’s.

Middlesex’s stand-in captain, deputising for the injured Ed Smith, led them to Twenty20 glory last month and hit 101 from 158 balls to frustrate the visitors today.

But he has not had as much success in the championship as Middlesex have slumped to three defeats in four games and slipped down the table.

Andrew Strauss also rediscovered his batting touch with 71 on a flat pitch after a lean series against South Africa.

The England opener was cruising after hitting 14 fours and looked set for a much-needed hundred but he came down the wicket to Claude Henderson and chipped the ball to square-leg to end a stand of 124 with Joyce for the second wicket.

Ed Joyce scored his first championship hundred of the year, hitting 14 boundaries

With Owais Shah on one-day duty with England, Joyce took responsibility, hitting 14 fours in his 19th first-class hundred.

After scoring seven half-centuries this season he finally went on to a century, reaching the landmark with a pulled four off Garnett Kruger which rocketed to the Grandstand boundary. The knock also took him past 8,500 career runs.

However, like Strauss, Joyce was out when looking in complete control when he nicked one from Kruger to Paul Nixon behind the stumps in the same over.

Nixon wound down the run-rate by employing Henderson for a long spell from the Nursery End, and was rewarded with figures of 2-69 from his slow left-armer, who bowled 28 overs unchanged.

But the Leicestershire bowling lacked real penetration on the docile surface and youngster Dawid Malan helped himself to 46.

He pulled 18-year-old Josh Cobb viciously when the young spinner dropped short and it was only when Leicestershire took the new ball that Malan and wicketkeeper Ben Scott, in good form with the bat this season, looked threatened.

Nadeem Malik and Dillon du Preez got the new ball to swing and beat the bat on more than one occasion and the promising Malan eventually chopped Kruger on to his stumps four runs short of his third fifty of the campaign.

He put on 77 for the fifth wicket with Scott before Kruger had Shaun Udal caught at point to finish with 3-64.