SURREY VS SOMERSET SPECSAVERS COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP

First topic message reminder :

Surrey have made one change to their 14-man squad for the upcoming Specsavers County Championship match with Somerset, starting at Guildford CC on Monday.
Left arm spinner Freddie van den Bergh replaces Gus Atkinson in an otherwise unchanged group from Thursday’s defeat to Warwickshire at Edgbaston.
Sam Curran (hamstring) and Conor McKerr (heel) will sit out their second consecutive match while Jade Dernbach (calf) and Amar Virdi (side) are working back to full fitness.
FULL SQUAD
Rory Burns (c)
Gareth Batty
Scott Borthwick
Jordan Clark
Rikki Clarke
Matt Dunn
Dean Elgar
Ben Foakes
Will Jacks
Morne Morkel
Ryan Patel
Jamie Smith
Mark Stoneman
Freddie van den Bergh
Freddie and Jamie will be on drinks duty, so the only decision will be wherever to start Clark instead of Patel?
Because of the success Patel had there last year you would think he would just edge it.
Over to you chaps

jimbobgooner wrote:Rocky and Elgar shouldn't be in the squad for the next game

Surrey will win next week quite comfortably I feel.

LondonTiger wrote:

jimbobgooner wrote:Rocky and Elgar shouldn't be in the squad for the next game

Surrey will win next week quite comfortably I feel.

Atm rain is predicted for a lot of the days and may save both sides.

If Sam Curran is fit and allowed by the ECB to play, we should be stronger. That would enable Patel to play principally as a batsman and for JimBob to get his axe out for one of this week's flops.

I picked up on the BBC report that Tom Abell thought on the third evening that we were in the stronger position. I'm pretty certain that Abell is genuine there. Although Burns' dismissal near the end of day three went some way to levelling things up, I shared Abell's view at the time and suspect so did most others at the ground. The 'proper' batsmen just needed to stay there and the runs would have come.

As Burns commented, the first ball drop of Bartlett by Clarke off Dunn was crucial. Especially disappointing for Dunn to have battled back to fitness and taken a rare opportunity splendidly - 12 wickets in his 2 games - but to end up on the losing side both times.

Particularly for King Carlos who has consistently been a supporter of Hildreth - although Bartlett's century on day one remains understandably the key talking point, Hildreth's 60 odd in Somerset's second dig was also very important. Without that, the visitors really would have crumbled and given us noticeably less to chase and more time to go about it on day three when we were batting sensibly. Hildreth showed the type of guts and application we required for day four but totally lacked.

Hildreth is quite possibly the best cricketer I have seen to never get an England call up in any format. It looks as though over 100 players have made their debuts for England in one format or another since Hildreth started playing. Many (most?) with county performances below those achieved by Hildreth (17k runs a@44 in FC cricket).