Surrey vs Essex LV=County Championship

SURREY HAVE NAMED A TWELVE MAN SQUAD FOR THE LV=COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH AGAINST ESSEX STARTING AT THE KIA OVAL ON SUNDAY.
Vikram Solanki misses out fron the glamorgan squad.
chris tremlett is still not available due to a hamstring strain.
The Surrey squad to play Essex at the Kia Oval in the LV=County Championship on Sunday April 26th, Monday April 27th, Tuesday April 28th, Wednesday April 29th:
Gareth Batty (capt)
Zafar Ansari
Rory Burns
Tom Curran
Steven Davies
Jade Dernbach
Matthew Dunn
Stuart Meaker
Kevin Pietersen
Jason Roy
Kumar Sangakkara
Gary Wilson
will dernbach get another chance?

Thanks, JimBob.

Tremlett living up to his Sicknote tag.

Hard to say who'll miss out. I well understand the frustration with Dernbach. I get the impression though that Stewart and Ford like him ''doing the Tremlett role and keeping it tight at one end'' whilst another seamer fires away at the other. I think there's a fear that Dunn and Meaker together in a 3 man seam attack could be too expensive.

With the forecast suggesting much of tomorrow could be washed out and the conditions not favouring spinners, it's even possible that Batty could stand down with us playing a 4 man seam attack plus Ansari (and Simon's back-up bowlers).

Aha. Roy and Pietersen are now 'Simon's back up bowlers', I see: thanks guildford If Nora carries the drinks, who is captain in his place: ?Wilson?

Which reminds me - why exactly have we signed Foakes? Did we need cover behind the stumps for Wilson, Davies, Sanga (and maybe even First Degree)? And where does Balcombe fit in when we have - in alphabetical Dernbach, Dunn, Linley, Meaker and 'Sick Note' Tremlett already vying to prove that five into four, or maybe even three, can go?

Early days and it looks good on paper, but I'm not convinced we've got the balanced recipe for a happy camp unless we get injuries and/or rotate wisely and sympathetically.

SimonofSurrey wrote: And where does Balcombe fit in when we have - in alphabetical Dernbach, Dunn, Linley, Meaker and 'Sick Note' Tremlett already vying to prove that five into four, or maybe even three, can go?

...and Curran

We go with the same XI as last time with Meaker again benched. As above, I suspect there's a feeling he and Dunn together could be too expensive. Maybe so but we still have to take 20 wickets ... hmmm.

Essex win toss and bowl. You would think today's weather is made for Masters and his fellow trundlers ....

Crazy to play Dernbach again - surely we have enough in our batting to make the runs to make up for Meaker being more expensive?

Hey guys, can we take Meaker off your hands please? Ha ha

Morning fellas

Burns and #ansariforengland doing a fabulous job so far

50 partnership

Mornnin' Olly, mornin' everyone,

Yes, Third Degree and Zaf doing very well so far. Important to try and see out this last half hour.

jimbohammers wrote:Hey guys, can we take Meaker off your hands please? Ha ha

I see why you might want Meaker, Jimbo - all due respect to a professional who is miles better than I ever was but the Ice Man shouldn't be sharing the new ball in county cricket, let alone for a Div One side!

84-1 at lunch with third degree on 45* and joined by the GOAT in 12*

Excellent first session

Pleasantly surprised when I came in just now to find that we've only lost one wicket.  Sounds like our batsmen have shown plenty of application so far.

Firstly, for jinxing Zafar.

Still a very good start given the conditions. Having won the toss, Essex would have been hoping for at least 3 down at lunch. Keep it going, guys.

Fifty for third degree

Burns now falls to Pannesar for 78 after a very useful partnership of 79 with Sanga.  KP up next.

Now Sanga falls for 52. 175 -3. Hope Interesting maintains form from the last match.

Meanwhile, Pietersen has now scored 1,000 fc runs for Surrey in his 17th innings, less than it has taken any other player from Hobbs to Ramprakash (via Ratcliffe). Whatever the different opinions about his character, no one can deny that he can bat.

KP faster even than Ratcliffe?  

First batting point.  It's incredibly gloomy here, a bit south east of London. Batting conditions must be fairly unpleasant at the Oval.

Thanks, Corporal. The Ratcliffe reference was especially for you!

Here at Guildford Towers it's grey as it has been all day but not too gloomy. Heard Churchy on commentary say that the lights went on after about an hour this morning. May be ok for the full 96 overs.

In some ways, I guess we would like to get off and settle for it being ''our day''. However, with rain still forecast this week (especially Wednesday, day 4), we probably need to push on when we can.

50 partnership for KP and Interesting. Cricket fairly attritional at the moment, which is hardly surprising.

Pietersen falls lbw to the regularly effective Ryder for 31.

Around 240/4 with 15 overs left. Mustn't undo in this last hour all the earlier good and hard work.

KP goes for a sedate 32.  Partnership of 68.  Now Le Roi   out for a duck . In danger of wasting most of the earlier good work.

4 lbw out of 5 wickets. Disappointing that Roy's not got started yet.

Excellent days work that imo

Olly - think you're quite a generous marker but that's not a bad thing with so many old cynics like me knocking around here!

My take is that in the conditions it was a good to very good performance by Surrey. Some decent batting but the losses of Pietersen and Roy in the same over prevented it being an excellent day.

We are potentially well set up to reach 400. However, a couple of early wickets could see us crash for 330.

Anyway, a game within a game in the first hour tomorrow (JimBob loves those! ) - Surrey need 57 off 14 overs for 4 bonus points. Hope to be there in the morning.

350 first up would be a good score, especially after being inserted - 400 would be a great effort.

Well played Surrey today.    That further 50 partnership at the end of the day was very useful.

Rory Burns said last night (interview on Surrey website) that 400 was the target and we would be ''really happy'' with anything above that.

The Corporal was right to draw attention to the unbeaten 50 partnership between Davies and Wilson at the end of the day. Very useful indeed.

Today looks as if it will be a lot more suited to batting although 400 will still take some doing. [Warning to JimBob - we may concentrate more on trying to get that sort of total in the end than going for 350 within 110 overs and a 4th batting point.]

Going along today - first cricket of the year. Hope I still have the same smile at lunchtime!

After a reasonable start this morning Surrey's tail collapsed like a pack of cards. At least it was quick and all neat and tidy.  Four wickets for no runs!

guildfordbat wrote:

Today looks as if it will be a lot more suited to batting although 400 will still take some doing. [Warning to JimBob - we may concentrate more on trying to get that sort of total in the end than going for 350 within 110 overs and a 4th batting point.]

how i wished we had guildford

Corporalhumblebucket wrote:After a reasonable start this morning Surrey's tail collapsed like a pack of cards. At least it was quick and all neat and tidy.  Four wickets for no runs!

You could look back over this site and find many other instances of this by Surrey! Looks as though Dernbach had to stop bowling in his third over - unfortunately (!) he's now back bowling again! 84-0 - hoping those forecasts for rain on Wednesday are accurate.

160-1 - Batty takes a wicket. Somehow their batsmen are scoring a lot faster than ours did.

No surprises to report from the ground. Browne's batting has been very good. Surrey's bowling hasn't.

I think Pietersen is about to have a bowl ...

guildfordbat wrote:I think Pietersen is about to have a bowl ...

today has left me feeling very

Chin up boys - looks like the weather will save us Wednesday anyways. One drawn game we should've won, one drawn game we should've lost it'll be. Can't complain about that

Yay - a second wicket just before close. Haven't checked Surrey website yet but I expect the headline will be something like: "Surrey fight back after tough day"

Corporalhumblebucket wrote:Yay - a second wicket just before close.  Haven't checked Surrey website yet but I expect the headline will be something like: "Surrey fight back after tough day"

A near perfect CC performance today from Essex leaving Surrey poorly trailing in their wake.

As I suspected, we didn't go for the 4th batting point that 350 in 110 overs would have given us and instead held back hoping to ultimately exceed 400. As even I didn't fear, we fell between two stools and crashed abysmally from 340/6 to the same score all out. Batty gifted Panesar his wicket today whilst Napier cleaned up the others and gave a wonderful lesson in how to clean up the tail. Curran soon went but could easily have gone even earlier, lucky to survive a first ball lbw shout when padding up and offering no shot - on today's evidence, number 9 flatters him.

Curran fared little better with the ball. Too often too wide and regularly punished for it by the highly impressive and effective Browne who enjoyed good support from Mickleburgh and later Lawrence. Dunn was a bit better and deserved his late wicket; he did though concede a fair few boundaries in the third man area, most shots being guided rather than streaky edges. I know we want him to concentrate on ''attack, attack, attack'' but worry if we can keep him in the side if he's so expensive.

Batty was probably the best of our bowlers. Several lbw shouts, on another day maybe we would have had more than one answered in our favour. Dernbach and Ansari were ok but not particularly threatening.

Two catches dropped, one by Batty and the other unusually by Roy.

All in all, a very poor day although Dunn's wicket just about stopped it being a terrible one. Certainly need 4 or 5 wickets in the opening session tomorrow.

dernbach out of the rest of the match with a side strain

Cheers, JimBob. Didn't know that. It was very strange when it happened. Dernbach was something like 2 balls into his third over, seemed to have a quick word and then just walked off to the pavilion leaving Curran to complete the over. No one seemed sure what it was all about. Word went round at first that it might have been a migraine.

He came back out after lunch and bowled again a bit later. There were plenty of slow balls then but you're never sure with Jade if that's just him mixing it up. Obviously now it was the side strain. To be fair, he was reasonably accurate and didn't give that much away. Unfortunately though, not overly threatening. He went off again later in the day (Kapil did 12th man role) and didn't come back.

Regardless of what people here think of him, it's bad news being a seamer down at this stage.

We already have a strong contender for understatement of the season - Stuart Barnes, assistant coach and bowling coach, was put up for an interview with Churchy last night (you can find it on Surrey twitter) and came up with this gem:
''The tail didn't quite wag as much as we were hoping for''.

From 340/6 to 340 all out, that's true.

The problem - but not a solution - has been recognised for some time. I had a chat with Alec Stewart at a seconds game at Guildford around this time last year. He commented that one of the issues the season before (ie 2013) was that when the sixth wicket fell ''it was a case of start the mower!''

curran dishing up more of the same

guildfordbat wrote:

jimbohammers wrote:Hey guys, can we take Meaker off your hands please? Ha ha

I see why you might want Meaker, Jimbo - all due respect to a professional who is miles better than I ever was but the Ice Man shouldn't be sharing the new ball in county cricket, let alone for a Div One side!

Your not wrong there Guildford. An all rounder opening the bowling in Div One

13 wickets in 268 overs so far this season................It's a bit pointless us batting first, but with Sanga and KP in the team, no-one's ever going to set us a 'reasonable' target to chase either.