Dawid Malan becomes first England Test player to score a hundred this summer

Dawid Malan struck a century on day three of Middlesex's Specavers County Championship match against Sussex to become the first England Test player to reach the milestone this summer.

Fellow batsmen Mark Stoneman and James Vince have played all four rounds of the domestic season so far but have yet to reach three figures, while former England captain Alastair Cook managed 84 in his first match for Essex before falling for a duck and 26 against Yorkshire.

England skipper Joe Root made a golden duck and 35 against Essex in his first game of the summer, with team-mate Jonny Bairstow managing seven in the first innings before blasting 50 off 44 balls in the second.

Malan reached his hundred with a four off David Wiese from 169 balls and scored 13 boundaries during a stand of 234 with Nick Gubbins for the third wicket, who completed his own ton with consecutive fours off Luke Wells.

Danny Briggs struck to remove both batsmen, having the Middlesex captain stumped for a well-made 119 and Gubbins caught for 107, on a confidence-boosting day for both players.

Gubbins, who is playing his first Championship match this season after recovering from injury, will have done his England hopes no harm with the current openers Cook and Stoneman struggling for form.

There will be one final chance for the England players to find fluency with the bat in the red-ball game before the two-Test series against Pakistan begins at Lord's on May 24.

Root, Bairstow and Stoneman will line up at the Oval from Friday as Surrey host Yorkshire, while Vince will face a tricky outing at Somerset and Cook travels to New Road to play against Worcestershire.

With Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali away in the Indian Premier League, the pair have yet to play any red-ball cricket following the Test series loss to New Zealand in March.