Tuesday 17 August 2010

Listless performance on day two

Surrey were made to rue the impact of their dropped catches by Worcestershire today as they closed the day with the midlands side effectively 62-0 and looking to build a big second innings lead.

The openers weathered the early storm but Harinath yet again failed to kick on and you have to now question whether he is quite ready for top line first class cricket.  On the bright side his opening partner Tom Lancefield impressed with 72 - the top score in the Surrey innings and he could just nail himself down a place at the top of the order for the near future.

Mark Ramprakash was bright and breezy in his 20 which included two sixes and he will have been disappointed to run himself out when he could've capitalised today.  Rory Hamilton-Brown is doing nothing to silence those doubters who think he can only make runs when the going is good, he was out for 1 from 13 deliveries.  Steve Davies was again superb with his 62 but should probably have gone on to bigger things.

The final six wickets fell for just 46 runs when we looked set to reach at least parity and perhaps eke out a small first innings lead.  As it is, this has been a distinctly average two days for Surrey.  The middle of the Worcestershire innings got away from us and the batsmen failed to stamp any authority on the Worcs bowlers.

Tomorrow morning, conditions allowing, Tremlett needs to come out all guns blazing and get in amongst them sharpish.  With the uncertainty of 50% of our opening pair, the inability of RHB to make runs under the kosh and the lower middle order having a sudden drop off in form, I don't think we can be comfortable chasing anything too far above 250.  The bowlers have a massive task tomorrow, but if any bowler in Division Two at the moment can do it, Chris Tremlett can.

4 comments:

Chappers said...

Inconsistent performances aren't to be alltogether unexpected. The key is for the inconsistencies to go from being whole matches to being just days of matches and then just sessions of days in matches... that would be progress. In this case the two evening sessions were really bad, where as previously whole games have been bad!! Getting out the rose tinted glasses - a good two sessions today and we can be in with a shout, but I suspect that this will be a result match so we are going to have to bat very well second time around to get that result.
On the plus side Ramps is due a hundred...
Chappers

GreenJJ said...

You are absolutely right Chappers, we are in a better place now than earlier in the season. We're not out of this by a long shot, but it will be a tough task to drag ourselves back into it. Ramps is due a big score, and Rory needs to get some runs...this game would be a good time!

Chappers said...

arg - 368 to win - not sure that is going to happen, the rain might help us get some more points though.

Tremlett must have bowled really well.

GreenJJ said...

He did by all accounts, in a really special patch of form right now! Unless there are several torrential downpours tomorrow this game is Worcestershire's, very disappointing.

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