Let the game develop urges Peters

Northants captain Stephen Peters says that his side's batasmen have to start scoring more heavily

The County, having won the toss, closed on 251-8 in the LV= County Championship encounter having been, at one stage, 114-1.

And while Peters, who top scored with 67, thinks a chance has been missed, he wants to see his side have a bowl before either praising or condemning.

He said: “I don’t like making too many predictions so early in a game because we’ve got to go and bowl on it.

“My gut feeling is that we’ve missed a bit of an opportunity on a pretty good pitch and we didn’t make the most of another good start.

“Ideally, I would’ve liked to have been 300-6 at the close or something similar to that but I won’t sugarcoat anything, the top order are just not converting.

“There have been too many poor shots and we need someone to be getting 130 or 140 and that is the difference between a score of 300 or 450.

“Unfortunately it’s a bit of a recurring theme at the minute.”

As for the plan of atack on day two, Peters is hoping that Ian Butler can steer them towards the 300 mark.

He added: “ian shaped up beautifully and Maurice (Chambers) is no mug with the bat.

“We want to get as near to 300 as we can and then see if we can put Middlesex under pressure.

“We’ve been getting sides 30-3 or 50-4 and if we can do that again then we have to sustain it.”