Sam Northeast's score of 335* has surpassed Gooch's highest first-class innings at Lord’s

On the second day of the English season at Lord's, Sam Northeast proved his talent by scoring 186 not out against Middlesex's bowlers. His determination and skill were evident throughout the match. Glamorgan's captain had set high ambitions for himself and he delivered by accumulating a formidable record-breaking score of 412 runs across eight-and-three-quarter hours.

By mid-afternoon, he marched off with 335 not out, out of Glamorgan's towering total of 620 for 3 declared. Northeast had surpassed any batter at the equivalent stage of any previous county season and had gone further into Lord's ancient record-books than any man in over 200 years of precedent.

April 6 marks the earliest date on which a player has ever scored a Championship triple-hundred. Justin Langer in 2007 and James Hildreth in 2009 are the only other players to have achieved this feat in April. It was the single nudged through midwicket for 34 runs after reaching the milestone that resonated the most with the knowledgeable Lord's crowd. This feat saw Northeast surpass Graham Gooch's iconic 333 against India as the highest first-class score at cricket's most famous ground.

Since July 1814, Lord's has hosted over 2800 first-class fixtures. MCC, who had moved twice in the previous 27 years, named their ultimate venue with a local derby against St John's Wood. However, neither team managed to score 200 runs across four innings.

Even with a conservative estimate of 25 wickets per first-class match since its inception, there have been approximately 70,000 individual innings played at the ground to date. In comparison, across 2537 Tests, there have been 78578 completed innings. Only five of those innings have previously produced a triple-century, with the most recent being Mark Wagh (of Warwickshire, not Australia) in 2001. None have been higher than Northeast's latest achievement.

This is only his latest achievement, as it was not even the highest score of Northeast's first-class career. His highest score came at Grace Road two seasons ago against Leicestershire, where he made the ninth-highest individual innings in all of first-class cricket, scoring a mighty 410 not out and securing a match victory.

At 34 years old, and like Hildreth, he is considered the best batter of his generation without an England call-up. This performance is unlikely to change that. Additionally, Glamorgan earned four batting points, but the performance may not count for much more. Craig Miles dismissed Sam Robson for 43 in the 30th over of Middlesex's reply, which turned out to be the only wicket of the day. Mark Stoneman's half-century confirmed that the Kookaburra ball was challenging for the visitors.

Despite this, Northeast's performance was of high quality. The day was only four overs old when he secured his first ambition with a punched single into the covers, a second career double-hundred. However, it was the moment of his 250, secured with a thumped drive over long-off off Ryan Higgins in the final half-hour of the morning, that truly ignited his mood.

By then, Northeast had survived a second costly miss at backward point - this time for 239, compared with 11 on the first morning - but there was no question of treating the moment as a cautionary tale. Each of his six sixes were hit thereafter, three off Higgins as he bowled too full in his arc, and three more off the toiling spinner Josh De Caires, including a massive shot across the line and over the extra-long Grandstand boundary, which was approximately 80 yards up the hill.

De Caires, whose father Mike Atherton had watched the rain fall at Old Trafford on the first day before driving his own parents down to watch their grandson in action, eventually retired with figures of 28-0-147-0. That included a leg-side long-hop that allowed Northeast to roll his wrists through a pull shot to backward square and race through to the triple hundred. By then, De Caires (and his grandparents) should have had something to cheer about with Northeast on 291, but Jack Davies behind the stumps made a mistake with a regulation stumping.

Middlesex's discipline deserted them amid the onslaught, and this wasn't the only lapse. Colin Ingram scored a century while playing as an understudy in a fourth-wicket partnership of 299. Although most of his boundaries were clean, he hit four sixes in 12 balls towards the end, including a fumble over the ropes from Henry Brookes at deep third.

But in the end, none of it mattered. As for the remaining two days of a game dominated by batsmen, the same could be said - although Stoneman and Max Holden may disagree, as they are just beginning their search for a defining innings.