A return to blogging - an air of depressing familiarity hangs...

I was away only a week (Sicily, since you ask), and Surrey seem to have regressed further into 2009 than I ever thought possible.  It seems the rain rather spoiled the game with Glamorgan, but another abject batting performance spoiled the game with Leicestershire.

Its not even as if Leicestershire are flying high in the four day game either, coming off the back of an innings defeat to Glamorgan themselves, admittedly they did follow that up with a very strong batting performance versus Middlesex.  James Taylor's double hundred reaffirming what we already knew - he is some kind of talent.

There were one or two pluses - Dernbach now has 32 wickets at 25 apiece in the championship - nearly twice that of the next highest wicket taker, and of course Younus played an impressive lone hand in the second innings and if he can take that kind of form (at a higher strike rate!) into the T20 we could surprise a few.

However that doesn't disguise that it was a horrible result.  Our two spinners weren't given a chance to bowl by our batsmen but nevertheless I do worry about our lack of a genuine matchwinner in the spinning department.  Batty and Schofield are very valuable players, but I don't think they are going to be picking up hatfuls, raging bunsen or no raging bunsen.  Perhaps the break from four day cricket will do the players good, though it hasn't in the past.  Oh and finally, Younus' ban has indeed been lifted, but it isn't clear at the moment when he will next be playing for Pakistan, I'm hopeful that we'll have him for the entirety of the T20 Cup!