One down, three to go

It wasn't as comfortable as it might've looked at various points through the evening, but Surrey leave Lord's this evening with two points in the bag and a third successive win.

It's often said that in the Twenty20s in particular it's all about hitting your straps at the right time, and maybe we're doing just that. It wasn't a great performance by any stretch, Roy and Davies played very well to give us a great platform but it petered out ever so slightly towards the end of our innings.

The decision to open the bowling with de Bruyn was inspired as he picked up the wicket of Stirling, but the decision not to give him another over in the entire Middlesex innings was equally surprising. Nannes and Tremlett also got in on the act early doors to have Middlesex 24-3 and a million miles from the 173 they ended up with.

A stubborn 74 run partnership between Dexter and Dalrymple threatened to take the game away before Schofield had the former stumped. A combination of John Simpson and Sam Robson, and some pretty average bowling conspired to have Middlesex needing 11 from the final three balls but Meaker closed out the innings intelligently. All the while, in between bowling plenty of full tosses and some rank no-balls, Dirk Nannes picked up 5-40 to give him 15 wickets in the Twenty20s.

Essex's defeat to Hampshire means we go above them and until Sussex's game tonight ends we're in the qualification spots. We still have a game in hand on Somerset in second but equally we've got three tricky games coming up. I'm not going to study all the various computations of what could happen with all the five teams competing for the final three quarter final spots here, but two wins from the final three games might just be enough, but to be safe, let's go and win all three eh chaps?