Looking down the barrel

I think Chris Adams must be a little fed up trying to give his honest opinion as to what’s gone wrong in the latest Surrey match. At the end of the day’s play Surrey close on 210-7, and it’s a bit difficult to pinpoint what the malady is with the team. Okay, now some wag is sure to say something about not scoring enough runs or taking enough wickets! The skills are all there, but it’s a very young team (only Nel, Ramps and Afzaal are especially experienced). Whether that is a contributing factor or not for the continuing woes in the championship games, who can say? It’s certainly not a lack of effort. I know the fans feel the lack of wins keenly, but I bet they don’t feel it half as badly as the team.

As so often happens, if you took Mr Ramprakash’s first innings total away from an otherwise poor score, Surrey would be in all heaps of trouble. As it is they are already staring down the barrel. None of the other batsmen were able to get any significant partnerships going, which rather puts that sizeable effort from Boje and Loye into context yesterday. Davies and Harinath opened, with the latter going for a duck, poor fellow, whilst Davies made 33 (which for him was an unusually small total). Only Davies will know if he minds opening in the championship as he does in the shorter game, where he is so effective – Jon Batty seemed to love opening - but it does on paper make sense until Brown is back from his injury problem.

RHB made 30; Afzaal sadly reverted back to his previous bad run of form and made only 12, although there was still a glimmer of hope whilst Ramps and Spriegel were together at the crease. Unfortunately Mr R went whilst looking set on 70, and Chris Schofield took his place at the crease but was sadly unable to replicate his heroics of the previous week, going for 29. Tom Jewell made his championship debut with the bat, but it turned out to be a baptism of fire as he scored 1 run before being given lbw. Andre Nel found himself coming to the crease in the last over of the day, and remains not out on 0 with Spriegel not out on 25.

You have to feel a bit sorry for Jewell, coming in when he did and then getting out with a few balls left. If he’d managed to survive he might well have dug in tomorrow, as he and Spriegel know each other very well and could possibly have made a good partnership. As it is the follow on looms large, and Surrey will be hoping to at least salvage their pride, even if a draw is almost as bad as a loss these days.

One nice, noteworthy occurrence was the first 5fer of Tim Linley’s first class career. Well played, the Viscount! At least something went Surrey’s way!

A note on the injury front: Mr Tremlett apparently has a slight shoulder niggle and is not surprisingly being looked after. I guess there’s no point in potentially making the problem any worse. Still no definite word on when Khan is coming to Surrey either: I’m beginning to wonder if the club is hexed. First we had the invisible bowler and now we have the invisible batsman! He’s not exactly a like for like replacement for Chawla but he could be a pretty decent signing for Surrey – if he ever gets here! I think we’ve been told somewhere in the next week, so fingers crossed.

This blog’s got a bit serious in the last few weeks with all the match reporting, and whilst I can do serious, years of taking the mickey out of myself to counteract sundry personal defects such as galloping agoraphobia tend to make me view most things with a comedic eye. I couldn’t help but wonder if the players actually like ice baths, or are they a necessary evil? Do they dread them the same way as the bleep tests? What would happen if ice baths were in fact installed as punishment chambers, where batsmen are sent if they don’t score runs?

To this end, looking at the amount of runs scored to number of innings, only Ramprakash, Davies and Harinath would really be able to avoid spending any significant time in there. The others would range from being very cold to having their assets well and truly frozen!