COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP DIVISION TWO, Lord's:
CLOSE OF PLAY, DAY ONE: Middlesex 219, Leicestershire 105-2
Middlesex 1pt, Leics 3pts
Match scorecard

Hoggard has now taken 38 Championship wickets this season

Matthew Hoggard took season-best figures as Leicestershire dismissed Middlesex for 219 on day one at Lord's.

Hoggard took 6-63 as Middlesex slumped to 32-4 and 161-9, despite 53 from Gareth Berg and 47 from Neil Dexter.

Middlesex achieved a batting point thanks to Tim Murtagh's unbeaten 50 from 41 balls.

Pedro Collins took two early wickets as Leicestershire slipped to 22-2, but Greg Smith (64no) saw the visitors to stumps on 105-2, 114 runs behind.

But it was former England seamer Hoggard who stole the show with a fantastic exhibition of good, old-fashioned swing bowling.

Fresh from taking his career wickets tally past 700 against Derbyshire at Grace Road last week, the 33-year-old took four of Middlesex's top five, with Scott Newman, John Simpson, Owais Shah and Dawid Malan all falling cheaply.

Bowling full and straight, Hoggard made the most of late movement through the air and some profligate batting.

Dexter, who was dropped at slip on 42, briefly steadied the Middlesex innings, as he put on 98 with Berg for the fifth-wicket.

Dexter fell to Hoggard, while Berg lost his wicket to Claude Henderson as he played outside the line of an arm-ball from the spinner, just after he had completed an 83-ball half-century.

Hoggard completed his six-wicket haul with the wickets of Josh Davey and Shaun Udal, before the home support were finally given something to cheer about.

Murtagh and Collins put on an entertaining stand of 58 in 10 overs for the 10th wicket, even hitting 22 off one over from Nadeem Malik.

Leicestershire lost Matthew Boyce and Jacques Du Toit, both leg before to Collins - Boyce falling to a yorker and Du Toit playing late and across his left pad.

But the visitors fought back with an unbroken third-wicket stand of 83 between Smith and James Taylor (32 not out).

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