Sunday 23 May 2010

No sign of Younis for the Northants game

Chris Adams has named the following squad for the game with Northamptonshire starting tomorrow, incredibly coming off the back of a four day game last week and two CB40 games over the weekend:

Matthew Spriegel
Arun Harinath
Mark Ramprakash
Rory Hamilton-Brown
Usman Afzaal
Steven Davies
Gareth Batty
Tim Linley
Chris Tremlett
Andre Nel
Jade Dernbach

12th man: Chris Schofield/Tom Jewell

The batting lineup and selection is of course my own estimation.  There is no Younis Khan as yet, and it looks increasingly likely that he will play very little part in our Championship campaign with only two further games between now and the end of his contract, which is frustrating.  It is disappointing to see Adams drop Evans after only one match.  Ok he was poor against Middlesex in a lineup that scored 500 in the first innings, but I thought his runs in the second XI showed he warranted at least a couple of goes.  It also means Spriegel is likely to return to the top, unless they go back to opening with Batty, neither of those options is desirable.

Meaker is still injured and I personally don't think Schofield is as effective in four day cricket as he showed himself to be in limited overs at the weekend.  I suspect when push comes to shove Adams will actually pick Schofield in Meaker's continued absence through a foot injury.  Jewell has scored plenty of runs in the seconds but he's in the squad as a bowler, I'd like to see Matt Dunn given a go, but that doesn't seem likely.

The fact that we're a batsman light persists which is another reason why Adams might go with Schofield because of his batting ability.  Hopefully Nel, Tremlett (heartening to see him play so much!) and Dernbach can continue their excellent work of today and the spinners won't have much work to do anyway.  Northamptonshire are a dangerous side, they beat Sussex by three wickets in the CC last week (their third win in 6 games) so have plenty of ability.

The results from Friday and today should give the Surrey players bags of confidence, not to mention the performance against Middlesex, so here's hoping they can carry that on and pick up a win - Northants are after all the only side we've beaten in the last 37 Championship matches!

6 comments:

Wes playforcountrynotforself said...

Good luck, it will be a tough bit of work. Younis might have decided to go fishing, who knows. Congrats on the victory against Lancs, couldn't follow over the whole distance but great bowling again, and it's nice to see Rory scoring a bit, but he's not a born bowler is he ^^

Cheers,
Wes

GreenJJ said...

Not really, his bowling seems to have gone backwards, which is no bad thing I suppose since its at the expense of some brilliant one day batting! God knows what Younis is doing, visa problems probably, but otherwise it might be fishing....

Rich Abbott said...

Agree re Evans. Didn't catch the Middlesex game, but doesn't sound like he's been given much of a chance. I've only seen him play one innings - against Essex 2nds where he got 60 odd. Jason Roy made 180 odd in the same innings, but it was Evans who looked the class act to me. Ready for 1st class cricket? Possibly. Worth giving more of a chance than he's been given? Definitely. He looked far too good for 2nd XI level (admittedly against poor opposition) and seemed to almost get himself out because he was bored. Really liked the look of him.

I'll give you a shout next time I'm covering a game at, or near, The Oval...

GreenJJ said...

Definitely, keep me posted on which games you'll be at.

I just think Evans deserves a bit better treatment than that, if he turns out to be not up to scratch, fair enough, but give the lad a chance!

Anonymous said...

Also agree re Evans. Particularly as he did make 98 against Bangladesh the other week, only to be run out backing up extremely unfortunately.

No Tremlett in the end, so a good chance for Jewell.

MH

GreenJJ said...

Starting to worry about Hamilton-Brown's treatment of fellow youngsters! The situation with Evans is not ideal and today Jewell's first two overs went for 14 and he was taken straight off - he barely had a chance to find a rhythm. In fairness he did come back on later and took a wicket straight away, his next seven overs only cost 30 runs. Anyway, I just worry that the situation early on was indicative of a lack of faith in youngsters - I hope not!

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