By Charles Randall
16 January 2013
Middlesex will be looking forward to see how their big prospect Ryan Higgins fares in 2013 because he was named as their youth player of the year in 2012, the season after scoring a double-hundred in the Thames Valley League as a 16 year-old.
Seldom could a young batsman have made a bigger impact in an adult match when Higgins scored 200 not out for Falkland CC second team in a Thames Valley 2B League game against Bagshot first team. The Bradfield College schoolboy dominated an unbroken first-wicket partnership of 334, a stand of a magnitude eluding the vast majority of cricketers in a lifetime, even the better players. He faced only 143 balls in an innings full of exquisite shots while his much older partner James Ettridge finished with a more modest century.
After a notable career at Bradfield, Higgins captained MCC Schools versus English Schools Cricket Association XI at Lord's in the annual match involving the cream of schoolboy cricketers. Having already played several games for Middlesex age groups and senior second team, Higgins faces an important full-time opportunity in the Middlesex Academy alongside James Ilott, son of the former Essex and England left-arm seamer Mark.
Angus Fraser, Middlesex's coach, commented: "In the past couple of seasons Middlesex has signed several former Academy cricketers as professionals, and I hope several of those named this winter follow in the footsteps of Nick Gubbins, Tom Helm, Ravi Patel, Adam Rossington and Gurjit Sandhu."
The Academy intake, announced last October, included off-spinner Freddie Fairhead, the latest player from Radley College in the Middlesex system after Andrew Strauss, Ben Hutton, Jamie Dalrymple and Gubbins in recent times.
Middlesex Academy 2013
Martin Andersson (Reading)
Robbie Collins (High Wycombe)
Bradley Erasmus (Sunbury)
Freddie Fairhead (Cambridge Granta)
Seb Feszczur-Hatchett (Finchley)
Arthur Godsal (Ealing)
Ryan Higgins (Falkland)
Max Holden (Cambridge Granta)
James Ilott (Potters Bar)
Marwan Mohammad (Uxbridge)
Jamie Odell (Maidenhead & Bray)
George Scott (Potters Bar)
Charlie Thurston (Shenley Village)
Robbie White (Ealing)