I'm back for Surreys new season assault!!!

To Guildford, Corporal, Gooch Carrott and everyone, I hope you have all had a good winter?? and looking forward to a new county championship!

Now where to start, Firstly so many of our players have signed new contracts over the summer that I cant even name them all so this is a good thing.
Hopefully all the youngsters can kick on from last year and progress.

Signings we have let Brown go who had been out injured for what seemed like years and also Schofield who everyone knows I never believed good enough.
We have brought in Kartik who hopefully will get us wickets (tie will tell), I wish it had been Ojha but he apparently was not avaliable. Rudolph for the first month of two
is a good signing he averages over 50 in county cricket as an openijng batsman and has been in great form recently for South Africa. Nannes back for the T20 is great news
everyone knows how good he is in this form of the game. Finally Jon Lewis he is obviously at the end of his career but has consistantly taken wickets and if can chip in and help
the youngsters then that can only be a good thing.

On top of signings I believe we may see more of Tremlett this year once he recovers from his injury, with Finn playing well for England in his place he may have to wait a while to get
back into the England Team.

So what would be a good/succesful season for us??For me the following

County Championship - Staying up
Pro 40 - To be there or there abouts (Hard comp with only 2 qualifying from group)
T20 - To be there or there abouts ( We have missed out on the last group game for two seasons running now)

I cant see Ramps playing much of a part this year.
I hear Davies will miss opening game which leaves Wilson who I have never been entirely happy with.
Meaker for championship games not for one day games pls and vice versa for Dernbach maybe we can pretend they are one person.
Linley and Lewis look very similar in style and can perhaps rotate and help each other.
Spin looks light until Kartik arrives with really only Batty (maybe give Schofield a call)

All in all I cant wait and as long as we stay up and have a decent run in one of the one day formats I will be happy.

You don't need to hear a cuckoo or see a snowdrop.

A post from MuchHappier is proof that Spring is here with the cricket season soon to follow. A warm welcome back from one of your many Surrey friends.

Very difficult to predict how things will go. Particularly as we have no way of knowing how often England will come calling in all the different formats (Tests, ODIs and Lions) and for which players. It looks like we have enough players to cover most eventualities. However, if England don't come calling much, we could end up with too many players standing idle and stagnating. All very tricky.

In keeping with your own Fulham FC outlook , I clearly hope we stay up. However, at risk of tempting fate, I would like to see us do it at times with a bit of style. If it comes down to the last day, I would rather be praying for a century from Le Roi than seven hours of solid rain!

Most of our players have not yet reached their peak (the exceptions probably being Ramps, Batty, the Brain and Lewis). An ambitious aim but I would like to think all will have improved and be nearer to their own peak come mid September. Some of the younger players (Dunn, Edwards, Jewell) may need to go out on loan to achieve this. I already fear (and to think you used to be the Depressed one!) that Jewell is looking like the 2012 version of Simon King.

Anyway, that's enough of any gloomy thoughts for now. Only 22 days to that first CC game ....

County Championship - Staying up


Hardly an optimistic forecast,but understandable,as Surrey will be one of the weaker counties in the division and currently one of the favourites to go back down again.

surrey always seem to have quite a lot of spinners, can we buy one off you please?

(see below)

cricketfan90 - no you can't.

Everyone else - nice to be in touch again with the prospect of the serious stuff just one small warm spell away. (MuchHappier - how very dare you omit me from the honourable list of those loyal few you mentioned by name? The cheek of it )

I do not share the cuation/gloom re CC1. I agree that Tremlett (and Dernbach) are unlikely to be summoned for national Test duty so see, with the Viscount plus A Spinner, an attack well capable of taking 20 wickets. And if one or two of the youngsters (including RHB and LeRoi) find their form with the bat, I could see us troubling the upper end of the table. On the other hand, I agree that the format of the two One-Day competitions leaves it a complete lottery. The only consolation in our recent T20 woes is that we have shown that, on our day, we are a match for anyone (eg the demolition of high flying Hants I was privileged to see at the Oval last July).

Much Happier, Simon - good to see all the seasonal Surrey posters beginning to peep out from under the duvet - signalling the approaching start of the domestic cricket season

cf - I have already offered Schofield to Essex - if you can't recognise a bargain staring you in the face then it's difficult to see what more can be done.

Simon my biggest apologies and to everyone else I have forgotton over the dark days of the winter.

Its encouraging that not everyone shares my views of staying up being the highest goal to reach this season. Hopefully its just me having a few lingering depressed thoughts.

You would all never believe that in life Im generally a glass is half full kind of guy but something about Surrey seems to turn me into the glass is half empty kind of man

Alot depends on the younger guys stepping up to the plate if two of Roy,Dernbach,Meaker,H-B,Jordan can come up with the goods and show they are top players then it should be a good season.

Corporal as much as I run Schofield down I would love to see him playing county cricket this season.

MuchHappier - yes indeed I was only semi in jest in my comments to CF. I think Schofield could do a good job for another county in the two limited over competitions. It's probably only the good performance of Spriegel and emergence of Ansari last year - both in the limited overs competitions that led Surrey to conclude that they had one too many of this kind of player that either wasn't suitable for the four day game or was completely unproven.

It would be excellent if Spriegel could translate his 40 over form into the 4 day game. I fear his confidence was knocked by his unsuccessful stint as an opener. But I am wondering where the opportunities will come. He has only got a one year contract so the pressure is on.

Although I saw no publicity for it, I've heard that Schofield and Salisbury together put on a few cricket talk shows during the winter. Apparently, they were quite good at the smaller venues but were like rabbits trapped in car headlights when on a bigger stage. Sounds rather like their bowling!

Corporalhumblebucket wrote:Much Happier, Simon - good to see all the seasonal Surrey posters beginning to peep out from under the duvet - signalling the approaching start of the domestic cricket season

cf - I have already offered Schofield to Essex - if you can't recognise a bargain staring you in the face then it's difficult to see what more can be done.

to be fair schofield wouldnt be a bad signing.

I haven't been Gary Wilson's greatest fan - but good to see him doing well for Ireland in the ICC T20 matches. 19 off 10 balls against USA, a vital 30 not out to get Ireland through to victory against Italy, four dismissals in the 10 wicket victory against Kenya; and a top scoring 49 in the defeat against Namibia.

Hopefully if he stands in for Davies in the early part of the season he will be able to reproduce some of this form.

Corporalhumblebucket wrote:I haven't been Gary Wilson's greatest fan - but good to see him doing well for Ireland in the ICC T20 matches. 19 off 10 balls against USA, a vital 30 not out to get Ireland through to victory against Italy, four dismissals in the 10 wicket victory against Kenya; and a top scoring 49 in the defeat against Namibia.

Hopefully if he stands in for Davies in the early part of the season he will be able to reproduce some of this form.

remeber though, completely different forms of the game, and previous history would suggest that he will probably do crap

cricketfan90 wrote:remeber though, completely different forms of the game, and previous history would suggest that he will probably do crap

Last year he was very poor for Surrey - completely out of sorts. While the season before he did fairly well with the bat. So it's not impossible that he will do at least OK.

IMO wilson is an average player at best.

I think you guys are a bit harsh on Wilson? He strikes me as a decent player at county level, not going to set the world alight, but good back-up at least. Scored an excellent 60odd against the West Indies in the WC in 2011, cruelly curtailed by an awful umpiring decision which Ashoka Da Silva refused to reverse.

Surrey seem to have some decent personnel, and certainly have the squad to finish in the top half of the Cc, but it's all about how they perform.

Wilson, given a run of games in the middle order, would be a decent county cricketer imo, but no more than that. I'm happy with him being Davies' understudy. He is doing well for Ireland atm and got a 50 today albeit against Oman.

We have a squad capable of putting on spectacular performances but also prone to the odd terrible one so it depends on which of these happens more this season! We need continued improvement from our young players, especially Roy who needs to show he can convert starts into big scores in the 4 day game. Hyphen improved his stats last year compared to the year before and should be aiming to do so again. If we could get the old Ramps back again that would be pretty awesome as well.

The bowling looks fairly strong this year also, lots of competition although fitness permitting I would look to send Dunn and/or Edwards out on loan to Div 2 to get some experience as there are Lewis/Linley/Meaker/Dernbach/Tremlett/Jordan all ahead of them in the pecking order atm.