A captain's innings to beat Sussex

Whenever you go away to top-of-the-table and come away with an eight wicket win with 10 balls to spare you know you've done well, but Rory Hamilton-Brown can be particularly pleased with himself as the skipper saw the side to victory with 71% of the runs in the chase.

I still think we're the under dogs to qualify, we've played a game more than Hampshire and still have an inferior run rate, but if Hampshire were to lose to Middlesex on Friday and Glamorgan won against Somerset on Wednesday, the four side would go into their final games on 14 points.  Glamorgan then have to play Kent, Middlesex have a tough game against Essex and Hampshire play Sussex.  We meanwhile travel to Gloucestershire.  All to play for, but its not in our hands.

Back to today, we were in the box seats ever since Symonds (yes, Symonds) and Tremlett each took two wickets in their first two overs to leave Sussex 20-4.  Some lower order hitting dragged them up to 121 which was never going to be enough.

Rather than come out all guns blazing the skipper and Davies elected to go the cautious route, putting away the bad balls and accumulating the rest.  The strategy didn't pay off for Davies who was out for a subdued 9 but it paid off in spades for Hamilton-Brown.

Credit to Symonds today, his bowling has been dreadful in recent games but given the new ball today ahead of Andre Nel he did the damage.  An interesting move by Hamilton-Brown and boy did it pay off.  He can still justify his selection next weekend by helping us to a big win over Gloucestershire and sneaking us into the quarters.  Seven wins from 15 games isn't champion form, but it is a vast improvement and I don't think any Surrey fan would deny that this is a far superior side to last year's.

The game next weekend is absolutely huge, the lads could either crumble under the pressure or they could step up and put in a super performance.  I'm going to plump for the latter, but I still fear it might not be enough, nevertheless fingers crossed!