Meaker, Harinath and Spriegel: Invest

I've had something of an epiphany.  I've expended and awful lot of effort in criticising Stuart Meaker this season, and now I'm here saying he needs to be in Surrey's first team as much as possible.

This has been partially brought about by the fact that he recently took 12 wickets against Middlesex's Seconds, and this week he's taken four more against Somerset's Seconds, and scored the small matter of an unbeaten 150 off 199 balls - that's some form.

Now, I maintain that he still bowls too many loose balls, and he's incredibly frustrating to watch sometimes, but he's an academy player, and he's English.  For those reasons I think he should be in our side ahead of the mediocre Rao Iftikhar Anjum.  Rao is here for a couple of months, and will contribute little to the future of Surrey cricket.  Meaker is our player, he's 21, and he looks to be going well and truly in the right direction.  We'd do much better to place a great deal of faith in him than waste effort on Rao.  I don't mean to denigrate Rao, I'm sure he's a good honest cricketere, but the plus points of Meaker far outweight the plus points of our current overseas player.

Moreover, we should also make a point of placing a great deal of faith in Harinath (to be fair to Adams, he has done this season already) and Matthew Spriegel.  Harinath clearly has the attitude to go far, and his technique will develop.  Spriegel may well turn out to be a limited-overs specialist, but I think he should be given a run at number seven in the four day game, and Hamilton-Brown should chuck him the ball more often - he's taken 7 wickets in two Second XI games in the last week.

Too many times in the last couple of years we've been sold short by players with the wrong attitude, not playing for the club in any way shape or form.  Here we have three players who are committed to the club and have a huge amount of talent - they should be given every chance possible.