Smith and Wasim outwitted on last ball

It was an age-old confrontation between youth and experience. And yesterday it was youth that came out on top as a thrilling National League Second Division match reached a pulsating last-ball climax. But that was only after a couple of old 'uns had rudely interrupted Middlesex's apparently comfortable cruise to victory.

Robin Smith has been around long enough to become the fourth-oldest player on the county cricket circuit (a list headed by the ageless Devon Malcolm), and Wasim Akram, some three years younger, has taken more one-day wickets, 502, than anyone else in the world.

The pair of them proved age is merely an attitude with Smith making the highest score of an entertaining match and the pair of them then combining to dismiss Middlesex's top scorer, Paul Weekes.

That had followed a scintillating catch by Will Kendall at backward point who launched himself at David Nash's sliced drive to end a 63-run stand of 69 balls for the fourth wicket.

Unfortunately Wasim's superb return of 3 for 17 was not enough to stave off defeat. His fellow countryman, the 23-year-old Abdul Razzaq, plundered 20 runs off one Shaun Udal over, a haul which included three enormous sixes.

It got Middlesex close, but Razzaq fell when they still needed three runs off the last two balls. The Pakistani Test all-rounder miscued a drive and Udal got his revenge, taking the catch at mid-off.

But step in another, relative, youngster, Ben Hutton. After his partner, Simon Cook, stole a single off the penultimate ball, Hutton coolly took guard then thrashed the last ball, off Chris Tremlett through extra cover to the boundary.

Earlier Smith, who will be 40 in September, showed that he has lost little to advancing years. In his 22nd season at Hampshire, and on the way to the 80th one-day half-century of his career Smith had the disconcerting experience of seeing his mother Joy, a diabetic, receiving medical attention in the seating on the midwicket boundary. Eventually a visit to the pitch by the Hampshire cricket manager, Paul Terry, put the former England batsman's fears to rest: his mother was fine.

Smith positively shone after that, unleashing a flurry of powerful back-foot shots through the off-side. He had had to enter the fray a little earlier than he might have wished after Derek Kenway was bowled by Chad Keegan shouldering arms to the first ball of the match.

If Smith had had a little more support things might have turned out differently. As it was, he was bowled in the last over, looking to take Hampshire over two hundred and reach his own landmark, but his heave at a Weekes delivery saw him miss the ball completely.