A good start, a good end

After crumbling to a frustrating defeat against Sussex in the CB40 yesterday, and having suffered total anihilation at the hands of Middlesex in our last County Championship game there was a danger Surrey could've been overawed this morning.

However, that was not to be the case, Hamilton-Brown won the toss and chose to field, perhaps a bold choice given the amount of runs scored here last year, but his bowlers rewarded him richly.  Although Dernbach was a touch expensive, Tremlett was exceptional at the other end in picking up 3-12 in his first spell including the key wickets of Joyce and Goodwin.  He would add another before close to finish with 4-32, he now has 29 wickets at 21 apiece though frustratingly for him he has yet to pick up a five-for.

Gareth Batty continued his excellent bowling form of late too in collecting 3-81, his figures ruined somewhat by some lower order hitting.  Having reduced Sussex to 87-6 and then 101-7 we let them off the hook ever so slightly in allowing the lower order to haul them up to 217 all out, but its a total which looks well below par.

In their reply Surrey's openers could've gone at the ball too hard in trying to rack up quick runs but to their credit Harinath and Lancefield, opening in a first team game together for the first time, did well to preserve their wicket in the seventeen overs they had before close and ended on 47-0 at just under three runs an over.

Tomorrow morning they will have to be careful again, Arafat, Collymore and Adkin were tight today and the ball still isn't very old.  Panesar will also get plenty of overs and is a bowler to be respected.  We ought to be looking at the 400 mark at least and hopefully pushing on towards 500 to put Sussex under real pressure going into days three and four.

An excellent start from Surrey today and the bowlers have given us a great chance.  Now its down to the batsmen to back them up.