Still no sign of Tremlett....money well spent.

The squad for the game at Hove has been announced on the Surrey website. On the plus side, Rao Iftikhar Anjum is in the side, at the expense of Meaker who was woeful at the Oval. On the down side, they still clearly don't see Tremlett can play a role in the longer form of the game. Oh and Michael Brown is still struggling with a combination of arm and shoulder injuries.

I don't really think its fair to the members to just give "workload" as the reason for his absence, and then not reference it at all in the interview with Chris Adams. I presume we're paying him a pretty penny, and not on a pay-as-you-play basis, I'd appreciate some sort of word on whether they see that he'll ever be able to play a four day game, whether it be as part of a four or five man attack.

Anyway, the squad (and what I think will be the likely team will be) is as follows:

Arun Harinath
Matt Spriegel
Mark Ramprakash
Usman Afzaal
Rory Hamilton-Brown
Steven Davies
Gareth Batty
Andre Nel
Tim Linley
Rao Ifthikar Anjum
Jade Dernbach

12th man: Chris Schofield

Without wanting to be too hard on the players, this is the worst of both worlds. A tail that starts at 7, and Andre Nel is a half decent number 9, but a number 8 he is not. And yet, despite having a five man attack, it doesn't look likely to take 20 wickets! Dernbach is neither quick or consistent enough at the moment to take bunches of wickets and Linley isn't a threat at all in my opinion. Hopefully Rao will add some extra bite though.

I can't help thinking that the extra batsman is what is required here. We need to stave off defeat, however negative that might sound, and our batting lineup doesn't look capable of doing that at the moment.