Lions find their roar!

Another win for Surrey! And, apart from the odd mistake here and there, it was a very accomplished win.

Ramps was given time off for good behaviour, and young Jason Roy stepped into a very large pair of shoes indeed. Thankfully, from what we have seen of him it looks like he can do a job for Surrey, and I wouldn’t complain of seeing Roy come into the middle order again. Could he be one to step in to Afzaal’s shoes now that Usman seems to have fallen very firmly out of favour? I’m not just talking T20 here but the championship as well, or would that be too much too soon? Whatever, I find the prospect of a RHB/Davies/Ramps/Roy/Symonds line-up a very interesting one if they all fire at the same time!

I realise I write rather boring match reports so I thought I’d give you a potted version (this is laziness on my part, and also because I have tired eyes (not to mention a pulled muscle where a person ideally shouldn’t have one). So, here goes.

Surrey win toss, bat first. Davies goes ballistic. Lots of crash, bash, wallop (not talking happy slapping here btw). RHB joins in. Davies still going ballistic. RHB goes for ten, the naughty boy!

Davies still swinging the bat. I blink, refresh the BBC page to check, he’s on 60 from 25 balls! He’s looking good, says Churchy! Then he’s gone. Curse of commentator strikes again!

Roy comes in next. We’re sniffling into our hankies coz it’s not Ramps. Roy looking mighty fine, says Churchy! Ooops – Roy goes for a brief but appealing knock of 12 from 11 balls.

Stewie Walters comes in. Makes 7. Goes off again.

Younus creeping about, getting on with his business. The fact I hardly realise he’s there whilst he accumulates his 21 shows how much Symonds commands the attention.

Symonds is in ‘Kerplunk’ mode again: you make a wrong move and he’ll have your balls.

There’s a total of 5 fours and 3 sixes. The crowd are very happy that they’ve got to see the version of Symonds that would sooner eat a child for breakfast with some Fava beans than sign a few mini bats after the game.

I can’t tell you what happened to Symonds to bring his innings to an end on 63. It involved a run out of some description, but I was downstairs tucking into salad so I don’t know who was to blame. I’ll blame the Lionesses for being too distracting whilst flashing their pompoms.

Now, where were we? Ah, yes.

Schoey: run out for 3.

Batty: bowled for 3.

Spriegel and Nel not out on 1 & 6 respectively.

There, that was nice and abridged!

And now the Hampshire innings:


We won! What does it matter?!? Yippeeeeee!

In seriousness, a good game by two teams who tried their hardest. That no-ball from Nel at the end had my heart in my mouth! It’s good to see the teams able to tackle games head on, without the likes of Ramps and Dernbach in their side. Davies finally made the powerful and explosive innings we know that he can. The skipper actually won a toss (he’s a bit like Mark Butcher in this respect: the pair of them are useless tossers – in a non vulgar way), the squad will go into tomorrow’s game with some fire in their bellies, and to cap off a very fine if sadly Rampsless day, we had this brilliant piece of commentary from Mark Church regarding a somewhat dubious piece of fielding from Hampshire’s Dominic Cork:

"What an embarrassing moment...it’s a pity TV aren't here!"