By Oliver Brett

Malan's power hitting of Lancashire's spinners was exquisite

Dawid Malan added another chapter to his remarkable debut season at Middlesex with a match-winning century in their Twenty20 Cup quarter-final.

The 20-year-old arrived with his team in terrible trouble at 21-4 against Lancashire, but lifted them to 176-7, hitting 103 off just 54 balls.

Andrew Flintoff, having taken 3-17, led Lancashire's chase with a fine fifty.

But once he had fallen for 57, the task proved too much and Middlesex won by 12 runs to make their first finals day.

Steven Finn was the pick of the bowlers for Middlesex, claiming 2-28 from his four overs to ensure his county's place at the Rose Bowl showpiece on 26 July.

Both innings followed similar patterns after Middlesex opted to bat first at The Oval, the ground they had selected to play at with Lord's being prepared for first Test against South Africa.

Early wickets at the top, with one batsman on each team getting a poor decision from umpire Richard Illingworth, led to problems for the middle order to deal with.

When Stuart Law skied a delivery from Tim Murtagh to square leg, Lancashire were 14-3.

Their chase now relied heavily on Flintoff, who seemed to be taking too long to get his eye in.

But he eventually found a few boundaries to get going, and then carved Shaun Udal's first two balls for six.

606L DEBATE Just to prove Corky always plays hard for all the right reasons, he was first to shake Dawid Malan's hand when he reached his awesome century buster_boy

He should have been stumped in Malan's only over when on 50 - Ben Scott missing an easy chance - but was out soon afterwards when hitting a Finn full toss straight to deep square leg.

Two Murali Kartik wickets either side of Flintoff's departure should have made the game safe for Middlesex, but Glenn Chapple nabbed two very streaky boundaries off Finn to set up a tense conclusion.

But with 29 wanted from the last two overs, Tim Murtagh had Chapple caught in the deep, and though Dominic Cork hit his first ball for six, 18 were needed from the last six balls.

When Tyron Henderson, an expert at the end of the innings, bowled Cork with the fourth ball, the contest was won.

There was only one candidate for man of the match, and that was Malan, who followed up his century on his County Championship debut against Northants in late June with another fine knock.

His footwork against spinners Simon Marshall and Francois du Plessis was quite exquisite, and even when he was unable to get quite to the pitch of the ball his hands did the rest as he carved 10 fours and six sixes.

The spinners came on and he just took them apart. He's obviously got an amazing talent Ed Joyce on Dawid Malan

The five overs they shared cost 73 runs, and Law surely put too much faith in them.

Afterwards, Malan insisted he had set out simply "to consolidate" when beginning his 80-run partnership with Eoin Morgan.

And he said the secret to his clean hitting had been a pre-season drill in Portugal.

It was left to Joyce to pay tribute to the youngster.

"The spinners came on and he just took them apart. He did the same to James Tredwell at Uxbridge the other day and he's obviously got an amazing talent.

"Hopefully he can do it on finals day as well."