By Oliver Brett BBC Sport Online

Watching their team play nearly all their home games at Lord's, Middlesex fans have always felt theirs is a team that should do well.

However, following a run from the late 1970s to the early 1990s when they more or less shared the County Championship with Essex, things had turned very sour in recent years.

In 1999, they finished 16th out of the 18 teams in the league.

That result meant that when the competition was re-drawn into two divisions for the following season, Middlesex would start in the lower tier.

Ramprakash now plays in Surrey colours

However, Strauss and the South African Sven Koenig have formed a reliable opening pair.

In much the same way that Richard Montgomerie and Murray Goodwin carried Sussex to promotion in 2001, Strauss and Koenig fashioned big opening partnerships for fun.

The duo may sound uncomfortably like a piano manufacturer but they certainly hit the right notes, with a combined tally of five centuries and 11 fifties and good averages in the mid-40s.

The real big name for the future in the batting line-up, though, is the middle-order left-hander Ed Joyce, 23.

Joyce delighted MCC members with a style that reminds them of David Gower, himself no slouch when it came to scoring heavily at HQ.

In the bowling, Phil Tufnell was helped by having big scores to defend and in the process has collected 45 wickets in more than 500 honest overs of off-spin.

Australian paceman Ashley Noffke also collected 45 wickets, a remarkable feat considering he was only available for eight matches.

Sven Koenig was an excellent signing

And mention too should be made of Simon Cook, who made a decent attempt of taking on the Fraser mantle by bowling accurate medium pace to good effect.

One glance down the Middlesex team-sheet, however, shows they are still some distance from the hugely successful team of the last generation, at least in terms of the household names quotient.

The team that won the title seven times between 1976 and 1993 featured many fine players.

It is easy to think of a whole stack of players in that era who played Test cricket, for instance.

Among the batsmen, Gatting and Des Haynes stand out, but don't forget Wilf Slack, Graham Barlow, Clive Radley and Roland Butcher.

Those four, plus wicket-keeper Paul Downton and spinners John Emburey and Phil Edmonds all played for England.

Amazing Vincent

In the fast-bowling department one of the leading lights was Vincent van der Bijl, who finished his first-class career with the astonishing average of 16.54.

Van der Bijl would surely have been a Test star had South Africa not been excluded.

With Wayne Daniel and Norman Cowans also part of the set-up, it was quite a line-up.

Strauss and his merry men have a huge legacy to live up to, and the coming years will reveal if they have the telling class to stand with the undoubted potential in their side.