Maynard and de Bruyn save the day

An outstanding unbroken 122 partnership between two of Surrey's winter recruits made it Surrey's day in Cardiff, Chris Adams can sleep well tonight.

At 164-4 Surrey looked to be verging on the edge of wasting a very watchful start from Gary Wilson and Michael Brown who saw off testing opening spells from Huw Waters and James Harris. The pair weren't exactly rollicking along but at 42-0 they looked well placed before Wilson offered a leading edge off Dean Cosker and Brown followed 20 runs later.

De Bruyn and Steven Davies set about rebuilding and put on 80 runs together before the latter was run out for the second game in succession, former Surrey man Stewart Walters doing the damage with a bullet throw to catch Davies short. Rory Hamilton-Brown then took his new responsible mantle to new heights, playing out 37 deliveries before becoming Cosker's second victim for just two runs.

Another wicket at that point and Surrey could've folded for 220-240 easily but de Bruyn and Maynard in particular played the situation beautifully. De Bruyn offered a couple of chances, dropped to a sharp chance to Cosker early in his innings and Powell later on but Maynard overcame an understandably nervous start to to cast off his reputation as a biffer, while he never shied away from a boundary or two, he played very sensibly (one attempted reverse sweep aside). Zander de Bruyn increasingly looks a genius signing, twice in three opportunities playing exactly the sort of innings required and that he was signed for.

The pitch didn't seem to offer too many devils, there was some swing for Harris, Waters and Wagg and a bit of turn and bounce for Cosker in particular, but the relatively slow start to Surrey's innings was more down to good, disciplined bowling rather than anything extraordinary in the conditions. It seems to be one of those pitches which is difficult to get yourself in on, but once you do, you can cash in as de Bruyn has and hopefully Maynard will go on to do tomorrow.

With 286 on the board Surrey need to aim for 400 as an absolute minimum. They will want to get the third batting point in the bag tomorrow and the fourth might be a target too, but the fifth is out of reach before the 110 over mark.

There is much to be happy with today, no one really recklessly threw their wicket away (though the Davies run out comes close) and Tom Maynard played exactly the sort of innings I was worried he was not yet capable of. This pitch won't be easy for the seamers, though I don't think its that different to the one Arafat and Meaker bowled on at the Oval last week, so they've got recent experience to call on! Batty and Schofield will have a lot of overs to bowl once our batsmen have put a score on the board. We need to get in amongst Glamorgan's fragile batting - made all the more fragile by the injuries to Allenby and Wright - early on, but the lads have got off to a very decent start.