surrey vs middlesex county Championship

First topic message reminder :

Team Director Chris Adams has named a thirteen man squad for the LV=County Championship match against Middlesex at Lord’s which starts on Thursday.
Arun Harinath has recovered from his hand injury that kept him out of the game against Sussex last week. Jon Lewis comes into the squad to replace Stuart Meaker who has still not recovered from the thigh injury he sustained in the opening game of the season against Somerset.
The Surrey squad to play Middlesex in the LV=County Championship at Lord’s on Thursday 2nd May, Friday 3rd May, Saturday 4th May and Sunday 5th May :
Graeme Smith (capt)
Rory Burns
Arun Harinath
Vikram Solanki
Zander de Bruyn
Steven Davies
Gary Wilson
Gareth Batty
Gary Keedy
Jon Lewis
Chris Tremlett
Tim Linley
Jade Dernbach

Shelsey93 wrote:Tomorrow could be one of those situations where Middlesex can do with a bit of a collapse. I doubt they'll declare with enough time left to realistically force a win, but if they're bowled out with a lead of 200-ish and the best part of two sessions then who knows?

I pretty much agree. Having been in a very poor state on Friday evening, Middlesex have got right back in this match with a vengeance. They won't want to chuck things away now with an overly generous declaration.

That said, Middlesex have just one bonus point from this game (Surrey have six) and so with a draw would pick up a measly 4 points in total. That might encourage some tonking towards and after lunch (may suit Stirling) leading to a 'safeish' declaration and the optimistic hope of skittling Surrey in a bit under two sessions.

The most likely outcome though is that the official Surrey website tonight will be triumphantly proclaiming that we remain unbeaten after a third hard fought draw ....

Carrotdude wrote:After two throughly excellent days yesterday can only be described as completely awful from a Surrey point of view, all that hard work undone by a lack of ability to take wickets and excellent batting from yet another person who always does well against Surrey (that's 3 out of 3 for them so far this season).

Trouble is, there's quite a long list of people who always do well against us.... I suppose Middlesex used to feel that way about Ramps.

Guildford - quite so; the Surrey website writer seems to extract more spin out of unhelpful pitches than most of our bowlers.

I'd be tempted to be more aggressive if I was Middlesex and actually give Surrey something to go for - around 260-280 in 60 overs maybe? That way if the other side go for it and lose some early wickets then you've still got time to force a win even if they decide to shut up shop; much harder if you only leave yourself 40 overs to get the 10 wickets in.

Surely the 3 points for the draw are negligeable compared to a potential win? Of course there's the flip side of potentially giving the win points to Surrey, but realistically if Middlesex are thinking of fighting for the title (and unless the middle-order continues to drastically under-perform they shouldn't be too far away) then no disrespect but they should finish more than 20odd points in front of Surrey.

An intriguing match so far; personally I think Surrey made a mistake in enforcing the follow-on, I think unless you're strapped for time, or a long way ahead (>200 certainly) then there's always the chance that that lets your opponents back in. Plus also, sides quite often seem to bat better when following-on.

middlesex upping their run rate declaration coming up

lunch middlesex lead by 252 4wkts in hand

343 needed off a minimum of 48 overs for surrey to win

Personally, I think I'd have batted second time around rather than enforceing the follow on.. but to be fair.. the weather wasn't so good yesterday whereas today was forecasted to be good and has turned out that way... Our batting has been pretty good and reliable thus far.. maybe without tempting too much fate,the days of Surrey batting collapses may be not quite as common as has been the case in recent years... however, bowling sides out twice may be a bit more problematic...

I ve said it before and will say it again, taking 20 wickets has been a problem for a long time now and but for a 2 month spell from Ojha we would still be in Div 2 struggling to bowl teams out.

Batty has never been prolific
Tremlett is never fit
Dernbach and Meaker still to convince in the Championship
Linley is solid
Lewis the least said the better

On the plus side our batting looks as strong as it has been for a while so we are going to see alot of drawn games this season I believe.

Oh for Martin Bicknell to be 21 again with the new ball in his hand!

As I mentioned this morning, not too surprised that Middlesex wanted to ensure they wouldn't lose but still surprised they batted on so long. Must have been a bit of a non-event for any spectators as the day wore on with the likes of Solanki, Burns and Harinath all having a bowl.

I actually felt the decision to enforce the follow on was right. In particular - the bowlers should have been refreshed after a night's sleep; the overcast conditions at the time should have helped our seamers; and there was a possibility of rain and time being lost.

I don't for a moment claim this as being part of my reasoning at the time but the result could actually have ended up extremely embarrassing for us if we had chosen to bat again and then set Middlesex a target of, say, 370. Before Mike says it, I appreciate their getting 500 plus batting third wouldn't guarantee them getting 370 batting last in (presumably) less time but we know never to take Rogers for granted!

If we are looking for plus points, we seem to have broken the TRJ jinx - dismissed by Harinath for just 2

The day panned out as I predicted it would - Middlesex unwilling to make too bold a declaration and the match eventually fizzling into a draw.

Both sides are still unbeaten, but with two wins already on the board Middx will probably be a little less frustrated.