Promotion rivals Middlesex and Yorkshire will head into the final three games of the County Championship Division Two season separated by just one point after a high-scoring draw at Headingley.
Middlesex started the final day on 441-5 in reply to Yorkshire’s 601-6 declared. They reached the follow-on target of 452 comfortably before being bowled out for 522, Ryan Higgins with 155 as former England off-spinner Dom Bess finished with 7-179 from a marathon 70.4 overs.
Yorkshire reached 150-2 before bad light stopped play at 16:10 BST, Adam Lyth with 62 and James Wharton 50 not out. Yorkshire took 13 points and Middlesex 11.
Despite conceding 522, with Sam Robson’s 108 supporting the in-form Higgins, Yorkshire bowled tidily led by spinners Bess and Moriarty who each bowled more overs than they ever had previously done in a first-class innings.
New-ball seamer Ben Coad added two wickets during the fourth morning to finish with 3-54.
Bess had Luke Hollman caught at second slip by Jonny Bairstow – one-handed at the third attempt – leaving Middlesex 441-6.
Despite being 11 runs short of the follow-on, there were no alarms during the early stages of a day played out under floodlights.
Higgins reached 150 off 252 balls – of his five Championship centuries this season, four have been above 150.
But he soon saw his off and middle stumps uprooted by Coad, who also bowled Toby Roland-Jones to leave Middlesex 513-8.
Bess wrapped up the innings by getting Tom Helm caught at short-leg and Noah Cornwell brilliantly taken by a diving Jordan Thompson as he ran back from mid-off.
Lyth, needing 105 to follow Higgins to 1,000 Championship runs for the season, reached his fifty in 63 balls but fell short of a century when he drove Helm’s seam to short cover on the verge of tea.
Fin Bean had been trapped lbw by Hollman’s leg-spin for 30, while Wharton reached an aggressive half-century off 55 balls shortly before the players left the field for bad light.
Match report by ECB Reporters’ Network.
