Surrey consolidated their position at the top of the County Championship table by claiming victory over Warwickshire yesterday morning. Essex, Surrey’s closest challengers, are poised for victory over Middlesex, in spite of off spinner Josh de Caires claiming eight wickets in the first Essex innings.
DAY ONE – THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
An unbeaten century for Foakes and 50+ scores from Sibley, Jamie Smith and Steel (the latter also unbeaten overnight) enabled Surrey to end the day on 339-4 and seemingly destined for a massive score.
DAY TWO – WICKETS GO DOWN LIKE NINEPINS
Surrey seemed to have lost the initiative when their last six wickets only advanced their score by a further 57, Foakes last out for 125, his 15th FC century and an innings that left him 16 short of 8,000 FC runs. However by the lunch interval Warwickshire were 38-3 and in deep trouble. They never looked like extracting themselves from this situation, and their first innings ended for 161, giving Surrey an advantage of 235. With Warwickshire clearly demoralized Surrey rightly went for the jugular, sticking their opponents back in. Warwickshire were soon 35-5 in their second innings. The sixth and seventh wickets offered some resistance, with Dan Mousley completing the only Warwickshire 50 of the match along the way, but Warwickshire ended day two 124-7 in the second innings, still 111 short of avoiding the innings defeat. The Surrey bowling performance was typical of them, with the wickets widely shared rather than any one bowler dominating proceedings. Their general approach this season has been to select four specialist batters, Ben Foakes and give themselves six genuine bowling options, a luxury permitted them by the presence of all rounders and the fact that almost all of those picked purely as bowlers have some degree of skill with the bat. Essex, their closest rivals, are less well served by all rounders/ bowlers who can bat reasonably well and tend to select six batters, a keeper and rely on four bowlers doing the job.
DAY THREE – THE LAST RITES
I was at work when this unfolded, but it took very little time. The key dismissal was that of Mousley, ninth out for 61. Warwickshire had folded for 138 in their second innings, giving Surrey victory by an innings and 97 runs.
ESSEX V MIDDLESEX
This is the key match among those still in progress from a Surrey point of view, as Essex are the only side with any serious chance of denying them the championship. Middlesex are showing little appetite for the battle, the scores as I type being Essex 304 and 319-7 declared, Middlesex 179 and 41-3, meaning that Middlesex need 404 with seven second innings wickets standing. Middlesex are in serious danger of relegation – the two relegation slots would seem to be between Northamptonshire (almost certainly doomed), Middlesex and Kent.
PHOTOGRAPHS
My usual sign off…
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