Whiteman happy as his ton puts Northants in strong position against rivals Middlesex

The Australian teamed up with skipper Luke Procter to compile Northants' highest partnership of the season, the pair putting on 158 for the third wicket as the County ended day three on 372 for seven, a lead of 314.

The total is the highest achieved this season by Northants, with Whiteman's dogged 114 from 248 balls the mainstay, although Emilio Gay is still there on 85 not out and there were also key contribtions from Procter (63) and Rob Keogh (48).

Gay's innings was interrupted as he initially had to retire early in the day due to a problem with his knee injury.

The County, who really need to win the game to keep alive their top flight survival hopes, must now decide whether or not they bat on or declare when day four gets underway, but the team will be on a high after what it was arguably their best day of the season so far.

“It wasn’t a pretty innings and I never felt like things were flowing nicely, but I was happy to hang in there and put the team in a good position," said Whiteman, who has now gone past 500 runs for the season.

"We knew if we batted well this morning we could really set the day up.

“Something we’ve clearly had a problem with this is year is losing two or three early wickets and always being behind the game, so it was nice for the top four or five to knuckle down and lay a platform.

“I really enjoyed batting with Luke (Procter), we were trying to keep each other going and switched on. He’s a good player and works very hard so we were just keeping each other accountable.

“We knew the longer we could keep batting, the easier it’d be later in the day. It’s amazing that this is our eighth Championship game and there’d only been one hundred-run partnership, so that probably explains where we’re sitting in the table.”

Northants know a win on Thursday will see them leapfrog Middlesex and lift them off the bottom of the Championship table, and Whiteman added: “With a long last session that put some overs into their bowlers, we thought that if we could have a good 20 or 30 overs, we could look to kick on later.

“The wicket’s got a little better, it’s maybe keeping a little low every now and then. It always means more scoring hundreds when you win the game, so fingers crossed we can take some early wickets tomorrow and make inroads.”

It was a long day in the field for Middlesex, but off-spinner Josh De Caires, who claimed two for 67, believes he and his team-mates are still in a decent position to win the game, no matter what target they are set by Northants.

“It’ll be interesting to see what they do and whether we can knock them over early, then let’s see what’s ahead of us. It should be a good day," he said.

“I think the boys were in good spirits throughout the day, even though it was a long and tough one. They never really got away from us – they went at twos or a fraction over that so now, having had a good last session, they’re not a million miles away.

“The pitch was pretty spicy the first two days, the lads said it was tough work in the first innings and today it looked pretty flat for a period. There’s obviously more in it with the new ball but once you get in, it looks like you can really make the opposition pay.

“A lot of our scores this summer have been on shoot-out wickets, almost, where the par score wouldn’t have been massive in the game.

“There’s a lot of experience in our batting line-up and there’s a fair amount of confidence that whatever we’re set and whatever plan we go with, we’ll commit 100 per cent and have success with it."

Quotes courtesy of Ben Kosker