Date-stamped : 17 May97 - 06:16 DeFreitas and Malcolm relive former glories By Christopher Martin-Jenkins at Lord`s First day of four: Derbyshire (123-5) trail Middlesex (146) by 23 runs PHILLIP DeFreitas and Devon Malcolm played in England`s last Test match against Australia a little over two years ago and DeFreitas should certainly be in the side which plays the one- day internationals next week. After taking five wickets each against Middlesex at Lord`s yesterday, however, they might well have reflected on the vast gulf between the Australians at their best and county batsmen at their most careless. All the long day - it ended 35 minutes late - batsmen sold their wickets too cheaply. Middlesex were bowled out for 146 after winning the toss and batting on a pitch which looked more white than green. In their turn the home bowlers, Angus Fraser to the fore, performed decently too and Derbyshire, their captain Dean Jones apart, batted with an equal lack of application. But the 15 wickets which fell, on a day on which the ball swung a little and seamed a little more, gave a wholly false impression of the difficulties faced by the batsmen. The motto for the day might have been Mike Gatting`s favourite imprecation to his team-mates in the field: "Keep working." He himself did so for longer than most but too few batsmen on either side were prepared to get their heads down and wait for the bad ball. Jones, who alone with Paul Weekes managed to bat for longer than two hours, has gained his team a slight advantage but Derbyshire, 23 behind, will have the help of his predecessor Kim Barnett only in an emergency. He reopened the wound in his stitched knee when he dived into an advertising board on the third man boundary. One way and another, an eventful day. It was warm enough for the Australians to be practising in the Nursery nets in sleeveless sweaters while in the indoor school the London Community Cricket Association were launching two projects, the first to encourage disabled players, the second schoolgirls. To suggest that they might have done as well as the batsmen would be to exaggerate because DeFreitas, from his favourite Nursery End, and Malcolm, from the Pavilion, were both somewhere near their best. Middlesex`s trouble started in the fourth over when Jacques Kallis, stretching forward, edged low to second slip and departed not quite certain whether the ball had carried. Two overs later DeFreitas also got the man who was most likely to detain him when Mark Ramprakash, forcing off the back foot, got a thick edge to first slip. Gatting may have second thoughts about the wisdom of becoming a player-selector, judging from the bowling he attracted by aspirants to the England team. He has been working hard to find his touch in the nets after a modest start to the season but he was looking more like the master of old and had got the better of an absorbing little duel with Andrew Harris when Malcolm, returning for a second spell, got a ball of fullish length to hold its own and glance the outside edge. Weekes had done very well, however, to reach lunch unbeaten, only to succumb five overs later when DeFreitas got a ball to leave him up the slope. Thereafter it was down the slope all the way for Derbyshire and especially for Malcolm as he bowled with both pace and a good line to take four wickets in as many overs. Derbyshire were quickly in trouble themselves. Gul Khan, opening in Barnett`s place, drove at a wide one, and Chris Adams, after a properly careful reconnaissance, tickled a ball which cut back at his legs to give Keith Brown a second good catch. Worse still, Adrian Rollins was taken at silly point off the first ball bowled by Weekes in an exploratory over before tea. Jones and the English-born, Australian-bred Clarke put an end to the nonsense for a while with a purposeful partnership but Clarke was less comfortable when Phil Tufnell came on and the last of several vehement appeals was successful before Richard Johnson`s ability to hit the deck earned him Roberts`s wicket too. All in a day`s work. Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/) Malcolm serves notice on Gatting By Stephen Thorpe at Lord`s Second day of four: Middlesex (146 & 108-3) lead Derbyshire (178) by 76 runs A FORTNIGHT ago, Mike Gatting undertook his first England selection assignment, journeying to Derby to run the rule over Chris Adams and Phil DeFreitas and assess the state of mind of Dominic Cork. The England spearhead is now officially hors de combat for the Texaco series, but this match has given the Middlesex captain a close-up view, probably too close, of another contender. Devon Malcolm has undeniably grafted tighter control on to raw pace, but whether this can be transmitted and, more significantly, sustained at Test level is a moot point. New-ball wastefulness is a sin and Mike Atherton, for one, will be hard to convince. Malcolm staked a claim here, adding another three scalps yesterday to his five-wicket, first-innings haul, including that of Gatting again, caught behind first ball. Middlesex were still in arrears when Paul Weekes shouldered arms then Jacques Kallis, with his first championship fifty, put the pitch into true perspective. The first stoppage for bad light cost 29 overs but Malcolm soon trapped Mark Ramprakash lbw before Gatting waddled in. Derbyshire had made hard work of overcoming a 23-run deficit on a chilly, overcast morning. A scything square cut eventually marked Dean Jones`s half- century but, three balls later, Kallis clung on to a quite magnificent catch in the gully. Gatting, meanwhile, took time out to impress on Jamie Hewitt the benefits of a full length, advice which would have been better directed at Richard Johnson when DeFreitas pulled him over midwicket for six. Johnson learnt quickly, though, flattening DeFreitas`s middle stump, then removing Malcolm likewise. Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/) Fiery Malcolm may be rising for the Ashes By Christopher Martin-Jenkins at Lord`s Third day of four: Middlesex (146 & 262) bt Derbyshire (178 & 99) by 131 runs BOWLING fast and straight, Devon Malcolm took three more wickets yesterday to take his match haul to 11 for 125, the best by a Derbyshire bowler at Lord`s for 21 years. A match-winning performance? Not a bit of it. On a day when the ball only stopped swinging and seaming during the relatively short period when the sun was fully out, 16 wickets fell and Middlesex won only their second match in nine fixtures of varying duration this season by the unexpectedly wide margin of 131 runs. Derbyshire, badly unbalanced by the gashed knee which prevented Kim Barnett from taking his customary place as opening batsman, were swept away by some hostile fast-medium bowling by Richard Johnson and Jacques Kallis, who took four for 26 and three for 26 respectively. If these performances, worthy as they were, put Malcolm`s imposing performance into some sort of perspective, the truth was that Derbyshire batted without much conviction or spunk. Their second innings of 99 occupied a mere 35 overs and four balls. Middlesex, by contrast, were rewarded with 20 points and a 1,000 winners` cheque for the resolution of their batting in the morning, especially that of Keith Brown and Jason Pooley. Together they added a relatively modest 57 but after Pooley`s solid 2.25-hour effort, Brown, that epitome of the county stalwart, battled on to add 76 to the 144 not out he had made in his previous championship match against Sussex. Middlesex have a cricketer of great promise in David Nash, the England under-19 wicketkeeper and a useful batsman too. But when is he going to get a four-day game? Come to think of it, when is anyone going to get a game lasting a full four days? This one lasted 234 overs, the equivalent of two days and one session. The ball moved around at least as much yesterday as it had on the first, when 15 wickets fell, and throughout a Derbyshire innings which never really got started there was much playing and missing to go with the nine wickets which fell. David Graveney might well have agreed, as he watched with Mike Gatting in the morning, that there should be more first-class and less one-day cricket early in the season. The two sages had a careful look yesterday at Malcolm and no doubt they will have been comparing this performance with Alex Tudor`s across the river. At some point in the coming Test series one or other will surely be called upon to add extra bite to the England attack and the choice between the tyro and the veteran of 12 previous Tests against Australia will not be an easy one. J. T. Hearne once took 100 first-class wickets by June 12, the earliest ever. Malcolm will not equal that but he is already exactly a quarter of the way towards 100, which these days is rare in a whole season. Bowling yesterday from the Nursery End, he quickly removed Kallis, hurrying him into a defensive stroke which was edged down the leg side to Karl Krikken. Brown and Pooley, however, batted to the stroke of lunch, finding much less difficulty against a stiff-looking Phil DeFreitas. Instead, Andrew Harris was Malcolm`s most efficient accomplice, having Pooley and Scott Moffatt caught behind either side of the interval before DeFreitas claimed Johnson, half forward. Nothing was more impressive about Brown`s innings than the way in which he accelerated as it became obvious that Malcolm would be too good for the tail. One of his square-cuts rebounded halfway to the pitch off the Mound Stand fence. Appropriately, it was Johnson, bowling with athletic zeal from the Pavilion End, and Kallis, equally astringent from the other, who took the two most important Derbyshire wickets. Chris Adams was caught at first slip, chasing a ball which bounced and left him, and Jones offered only his front pad to a ball which came back the other way. When Adrian Rollins, attempting a single to cover`s right, was brilliantly run out by Pooley, it became apparent that this would be Middlesex`s day. They did not even have to claim the extra half- hour. Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/) Contributed by The Management (help@cricinfo.com)