SURREY VS MIDDLESEX SPECSAVERS COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP

First topic message reminder :

Surrey have named a 13 man squad for their Specsavers County Championship match with Middlesex at the Kia Oval, starting on Monday 28 August.
Aaron Finch misses out on the match after sustaining a calf injury in Friday’s Natwest T20 Blast quarter-final defeat to Birmingham Bears while Moises Henriques has returned to Australia following the completion of Surrey’s white ball campaign.
Arun Harinath is also unavailable having failed to recover from a side strain picked up in the 2nd XI match with Middlesex earlier this month.
Tom Curran sadly remains on the treatment table
Youngsters Ollie Pope and Ryan Patel are in contention for their County Championship debut while Conor McKerr and Amar Virdi will both be hoping to make their third first-class appearances for Surrey.
The full squad is:
Gareth Batty (captain)
Scott Borthwick
Rory Burns
Rikki Clarke
Sam Curran
Jade Dernbach
Ben Foakes
Conor McKerr
Stuart Meaker
Ryan Patel
Ollie Pope
Jason Roy
Amar Virdi
For me Dernbach and McKerr to miss out the weather is lovely for spin now
Over to you chaps

Clarke gets Franklin strangled down the leg side in the last over before lunch! Middlesex 5 down with a lead of 53 (maybe 6 down - Compton has back spasms and may not bat)

We have a real sniff here if the rain stays away

Would like to see Batty get himself into the attack against the lower order

Good Golly I'm Olly wrote:Clarke gets Franklin strangled down the leg side in the last over before lunch! Middlesex 5 down with a lead of 53 (maybe 6 down - Compton has back spasms and may not bat)

We have a real sniff here if the rain stays away

May not see Compton. I've had an impression for a while that he's from the Tremlett School of Sicknotes!

Would like to see Batty or Virdi on soon considering the ball is now 43 overs old and they took four wickets between them first dig. Don't let the game drift now Gareth

Yeah, it looks like it's slipping. Middlesex will get a good lift if they're still batting at tea - that comes at 3:40 today (last day) whatever. We need at least one spinner on now.

PS Did try to warn about Simpson, unfortunately.

Meaker gets Rayner and Compton reappears at the crease. Stick it up him, Meaks!

Meaker gets the breakthrough. Rayner lbw for 30

Meaker gets the breakthrough. Rayner lbw for 30

Tea. Middlesex 7 down and 162 ahead.

By my reckoning, 39 overs left to bat ... but only in theory. You lose all of the over in which the wicket falls plus 2 more for the changeover.

We're therefore almost out of time and that's assuming we don't lose early wickets anyway. Sadly, we could even see a Middlesex declaration at 4:50 and hands then being shaken on the draw.

Players off cos a metal arrow has landed on the square, serious incident it appears

Yikes - sounds like a mad person firing arrow into the Oval from somewhere outside. Hope everyone is safe!

a crossbow arrow scary stuff

Utterly awful. Something I've always liked so much about going to cricket is being able to switch off from all the madness going on in the world.

guildfordbat wrote:

Good Golly I'm Olly wrote:Clarke gets Franklin strangled down the leg side in the last over before lunch! Middlesex 5 down with a lead of 53 (maybe 6 down - Compton has back spasms and may not bat)

We have a real sniff here if the rain stays away

May not see Compton. I've had an impression for a while that he's from the Tremlett School of Sicknotes!

Dramatic finish at The Oval with play abandoned after arrow or crossbow bolt "loosed into ground". Apparently it landed only about two pitches away from the wicket but, thankfully, no one was hurt.
   Police now investigating, with crowd allowed home.

Back to the cricket - how is it that we have 11 more batting points than anyone else, a decent bowling total, yet have only won 1 game? The same thing has been happening for years now. Is it down to the captaincy?

kingdaveeagle wrote:Back to the cricket - how is it that we have 11 more batting points than anyone else, a decent bowling total, yet have only won 1 game? The same thing has been happening for years now. Is it down to the captaincy?

Dave - I suspect with home matches it's a question of Oval pitches not being conducive to results - and not deteriorating much on day 3/4. But our bowling frequently lacks penetration - briefly, before he got homesick, Footitt threatened to blow sides away. Sam Curran's second innings burst in this match was a bit of an exception - neither Curran this season seems to be taking wickets other than every now and again. Meaker has not been too bad - with an occasional really good burst for an over or two - but he struggles to follow that through and polish off the tail. We've lost Ansari and Virdi is very inexperienced. Batty OK/reasonable but not often a match winner. (If Oval pitches were more bowler friendly we might of course end up losing more matches than we won.)

The Corporal posted his reply as I was typing mine but, even though some of my comments replicate his, here is my take.

Don't think our failure to win matches has been especially down to captaincy.  The match that finished today was the first one since the opening game of the season in which we have restricted our opponents to a first innings total of below 300 (curtailed Yorkshire game aside) and on several occasions the opposition have scored above 400. I think that opening game against Warwickshire has been the only one where we've taken 20 wickets in the match, usually a requirement for winning.  

To be fair we've played on some very good wickets but I don't think we have a real match winning bowler in our stable. In general I'd always prefer a bowler as overseas player for this reason but, with us entering into yet another period of transition, I can see why we might favour a batsman especially if Stoneman manages to establish himself as an England player.

Voice of the Beehive wrote:The Corporal posted his reply as I was typing mine but, even though some  of my comments replicate his, here is my take.

Don't think our failure to win matches has been especially down to captaincy.  The match that finished today was the first one since the opening game of the season in which we have restricted our opponents to a first innings total of below 300 (curtailed Yorkshire game aside) and on several occasions the opposition have scored above 400. I think that opening game against Warwickshire has been the only one where we've taken 20 wickets in the match, usually a requirement for winning.  

To be fair we've played on some very good wickets but I don't think we have a real match winning bowler in our stable. In general I'd always prefer a bowler as overseas player for this reason but, with us entering into yet another period of transition, I can see why we might favour a batsman especially if Stoneman manages to establish himself as an England player.

That's my thinking too and supported by the stats.

Looking at Division One county averages for this season, there's a big difference between where Surrey players fit for batting and bowling.

We have 4 players in the top 9 for batting - Sanga at the top of the shop and Roy, Stoneman and Burns at 6th, 7th and 9th respectively.

Our 4 bowlers with the best averages are Clarke from his two matches (in 14th place), the departed Footitt (36th), Meaker (43rd) and Batty (62nd).

It should be noted that drawing matches is not the worst thing - yes it's annoying we haven't got more victories to be further up the table, but by not losing we have established our position in mid table despite what has been a very tumultuous year off the pitch with player departures and injuries, whilst also being able to give a good crop of youngster division one experience.

In theory, it should stand us in good sted going forward.

Anything further regarding the crossbow bolt incident? I read the police saying not terrorist related (I can't imagine a County match being a target of a terror attack - more likely at an international), but what on Earth else was it about - a horrible prank ('I know, let's fire our crossbow into the cricket ground ...what do you mean there was a match on?'), an 'accident', at least with regard to where the arrow came down, or something more malicious?

Was listening on the radio when this happened, and it is just the most weird incident.

Hi Dummy - I wasn't there yesterday so can't really add anything much.

The club's hope - as expressed by club captain Gareth Batty - is that it was a couple of kids mucking about in a field somewhere rather than anything more untoward.

I have heard though that the stewards were very efficient yesterday. That doesn't surprise me. For county games, they're regulars and have a good rapport with a lot of the members and spectators. It could have been very and frighteningly different if this had happened during a t20. The extra stewards brought in for that tend to have far less general awareness and little knowledge of the game. When a spectator complained to a relief steward about people in front constantly standing up during an over, he reportedly replied, ''what's an over?''