Edinburgh cricketer lives the dream with incredible moment at Lord's

Capital batsman Tom Simpson has re-lived the moment when he achieved every cricketer’s dream of a century scored at Lord’s.

The 23-year-old former Boroughmuir Hight School student joined some of the game’s greats when he smoked a ton on the hallowed turf against Cambridge University while playing a Twenty20 match for Oxford University where he is studying for a Masters degree in Corporate Social Policy.

Last season’s Carlton club captain said: “I didn’t really think about scoring a century too much until striking 22 off a single over which took me deep into the 80s. I then realised a hundred was do-able and expected to be nervous; actually I was more nervous at the start of my innings.”

If Simpson was slightly cautious it would have been understandable having been out twice previously on 99, although he does have “five or six” hundreds on his cricketing CV. “The match was played on a pitch with a short leg-side boundary which I was able to exploit a bit but on 98 I just punched a delivery down the ground to a much longer boundary and sprinted like mad."

Tom Simpson at the moment he completed his Lord's century

And one ball later the fairytale was over…. “Having reached the landmark off the first ball of the ultimate over I tried to hit over the top of the fielders and got caught!”

Simpson’s heroics didn’t herald a team victory and there was a bit of a hangover in his next knock which was for Carlton against Grange in the East District Premiership last weekend. “I actually ran myself out” the former Scotland A player who was included in an initial squad of 40 for an international T-20 sheepishly remarked.

The ups and downs of competitive sport put firmly in focus although Simpson was able to sum up his experience at the home of cricket with classic understatement, saying: "It was a pretty good day out.”