Our 2026 season gets underway tomorrow at Lord's, when Gloucestershire visit the Home of Cricket, for the opening match of our Rothesay County Championship campaign.
Middlesex Men’s Head Coach, Peter Fulton, has named a squad of 13 for his first game in charge of the side.
Middlesex will be led by skipper Leus du Plooy, who begins his first full-season as captain of the side. He’ll be looking to continue his form from the 2025 campaign, where he finished as the club’s leading run-scorer with 1009 runs. His best score of 263* came in the final game of the season against this weekend’s opponents.
Leus will likely be joined at the top of the order by opening-pair Sam Robson, who is just 55 runs shy of 14,000 first-class runs, and Josh de Caires, with Max Holden batting at three. All-rounder Ryan Higgins and Ben Geddes will likely be next, with wicket-keeper Joe Cracknell following.
Toby Roland-Jones will lead the seam attack, alongside Tom Helm and Ryan Higgins, who both recently signed new contracts with Middlesex. Youngsters Sebastian Morgan and Naavya Sharma will be in support
The spin department is led by Zafar Gohar, with Luke Hollman in support. Josh de Caires, Leus du Plooy and Sam Robson may have the opportunity to assist if there’s any turn on offer on an early April wicket.
Middlesex head into the opening game off the back of three pre-season matches, against Hampshire, Oxford UCCE and Nottinghamshire, and there were plenty of positives to take from each encounter.
Against Hampshire, Higgins, Holden and Robson were all in the runs. At Merchant Taylors' School against Oxford UCCE, Josh de Caires, Nathan Fernandes and Aaryan Sawant all scored half-centuries, whilst Tom Helm excelled with the ball, taking four wickets. Finally, against Nottinghamshire, Josh de Caires scored his second half-century in pre-season with Naavya Sharma taking two wickets in a heavily rain-affected game.
Play will get underway at 11am tomorrow, and we'll be covering the whole game live on our enhanced live stream, available on the Middlesex website or on the Club's YouTube channel, with lead commentator Kevin Hand, who will be joined by various special guests throughout the match.
Middlesex squad to take on Gloucestershire:
Middlesex Men
Gloucestershire Men
