Unless Matt Spriegel plays a very unlikely hand tomorrow Mark Ramprakash will have recorded the top score in a Surrey innings for the 14th time in the last 31 innings that he's played in, incredibly that means he top scores for us 45% of the time. Such an over-reliance on one player is not healthy!
To be fair, I don't know the extent to which other sides rely on one player, but I doubt anyone does to the extent that we rely on Ramps. Again today batsmen lost their wicket when well set, Davies, Hamilton-Brown and Schofield all made it to 30 or thereabouts and failed to kick on. Afzaal, almost needless to say, failed again, his average for the season of 19 is indicative of a horrible run of form and only lack of credible alternatives is keeping him in the side.
Surrey also endured a pretty terrible end to the day. When it looked possible that we might end the day five down with Spriegel and Schofield at the crease and going nicely, two wickets went down in rapid succession bringing Andre Nel to the crease before the close.
38 more runs are still required if Surrey are to avoid the follow on, and the combined batting talents of Spriegel, Linley and Nel ought to be just enough to see us over that line, but we're still firmly behind the curve in this match.
With two days still remaining and a side looking devoid of the confidence of the weekend this will be a tough one for Surrey to save.
A quick Younis Khan update, the Times of India reports that he left Pakistan today and is winging his way to Surrey as we speak. That will hopefully mean he's in place to make the trip to Glamorgan for the match starting on Saturday, and boy do we need him!
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2 comments:
Unlucky bowlers on day 1, but the wicket seems to be doing something now, maybe you can get them out more quickly this time. Ramps domination is worrying, agreed.
Cheers,
Wes
If we're going to be getting them out quickly we need to make them bat again first! The way some of the senior players made it to thirty and then got out says to me that players aren't playing with enough responsibility, which is criminal. It also makes me worry about getting those 40 runs to avoid the follow on, especially if there's a bit of cloud about tomorrow!
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