Heavy defeat looms for Surrey (get used to that sentence)

Perhaps I should just re-post the synonyms for "bad"?  Another woeful day for Surrey, They allowed the Sussex tail to put on over 130 runs, rapidly in the morning, comprehensively failing to finish them off quickly as I had kindly asked.

They then proceeded to lose three wickets before 50 runs were on the board, and but for an impressive partnership between Steve Davies and Usman Afzaal of 140 or so, the day would've been considerably shorter. Surrey did at least manage to avoid the embarrassment of a three day defeat, but barring a scintillating hundred from Rao or Dernbach, Sussex will finish this off tomorrow early doors for a thoroughly well deserved victory.

A particularly depressing stat from this game is that barely 7 of the 19 Surrey partnerships so far have reached double figures, that is incredibly poor.  The Davies-Afzaal partnership was the first time this season that two batsmen have taken responsibility to try and dig us out of a hole (it was only broken by a dubious Goodwin catch - sparking a collapse of 4 wickets for 30 runs).  This needs to be addressed by the batting coach, urgently.

I am also interested to know why Hamilton-Brown dropped himself down to number six in the order, I certainly hope he's not hiding himself down there!  This is another sorry performance from Surrey and if this continues much longer I shall start blogging about something else entirely, there's only so many times I can write the 'Surrey roundly trounced again' post.

In other news, Surrey are apparently chasing Dan Vettori to play at the start and end of the T20 Cup (New Zealand have a series against Sri Lanka right slap bang in the middle of it).  This would be extremely welcome!  As a batsman he'd easily slot into our top six, and he'd be our best bowler.  Does make it seem increasingly unlikely that young Chawla will be appearing at the Oval at all this summer though....watch this space!