Cometh the hour, cometh the Mayn man

Surrey are but one Northamptonshire wicket away from holding their 2012 destiny in their own hands as they closed day one against Derbyshire on precisely 400-8.

That score, made in just 96 overs gave them a full quota of five batting points while Northants look likely to pick up four at the most against Gloucestershire - they are 316-9 with only 14 overs left to score the 84 runs they need for full batting bonus. Surrey's 400 was made largely on the back of Tom Maynard's third Championship hundred of the season, with handy contributions from the usual suspects Steven Davies and Zander de Bruyn.

In scoring their runs today Davies and Maynard passed 1,000 runs for the season, giving Surrey four players past the mark in 2011. By way of comparison in 2010 just one player, Mark Ramprakash, made it past the 1,000 run mark. Surrey batsman comprise 40% of the top ten leading runscorers in Division Two, no other county has more than one representative.

Surrey were helped along the way by some profligate bowling from Derbyshire, Mark Footitt was particularly wasteful. With Surrey on the verge of 400 Footitt first bowled Meaker and then had him caught in the gully, both off no-balls.

The only negatives from today were the low scores (or no-scores) of Ramprakash and Hamilton-Brown. Their dismissals left Surrey reeling at 12-2 and ordinarily a further collapse might have been in the offing. But this is a different Surrey, this Surrey has self-belief and confidence as first Davies and de Bruyn, then Maynard and Roy, and then Maynard all by himself dug us out of the hole. Tom Maynard stood up to be counted quite beautifully today.

Stuart Meaker and Tim Linley will return to the crease tomorrow morning, presumably with some license to give the ball a whack. Hamilton-Brown will then look to them to deliver the goods with the ball as well. I think 400 plus whatever the last three can cobble together is better than par, and our bowlers should be looking at bowling out Derbyshire cheaply to gain a healthy first innings lead.

The idea of First Division cricket is all of a sudden looking very possible, if not quite probable just yet. There is still a lot of cricket to be played in this and the Northants game, but we are well on top, and the Surrey of the late-2011 season is not the type of team to let things slip. Keep it up lads!

Lord's here we come!

Surrey continued what is beginning to look like a suspiciously good end to the 2011 season by comprehensively beating Sussex by 71 runs in the shortened CB40 semi-final at the Oval today.

The rain threatened to curtail the day's play completely until it finally relented at about 3pm and play began 45 minutes later with the game cut to 24 overs aside. Earlier in the day Surrey had won the toss and asked to bat first. When they did eventually get going Hamilton-Brown, dropped by the 'keeper early in his innings, helped us off to a fine start. Each batsman that came and went thereafter helped keep the run rate above 9 almost throughout.

It was an outstanding knock of 60 off just 33 balls from Tom Maynard which did the bulk of the damage. Scoring his runs almost exclusively on the leg side he hit four huge sixes, while Davies, Roy and de Bruyn all did their bit to keep the pressure on the Sussex bowlers. Monty Panesar was the only bowler who was able to exert any control over our batsmen, though Chris Liddle did bowl a lot better than his economy rate of almost 8 an over suggests.

In the end Surrey managed 228 off their 24 overs, significantly eclipsing a couple of totals they've managed at the Oval in full 40 over encounters this season. Again Hamilton-Brown opted to open the innings with spin though this time it was Spriegel rather than the captain himself. His faith was rewarded as he had first the dangerous Prior caught at cover, and then he caught Murray Goodwin off his own bowling to set Sussex back early on.

Yasir Arafat also bowled two good overs early on but Ed Joyce remained at the crease, threatening to single handedly make Sussex competitive. Gareth Batty soon accounted for him though, and Joe Gatting soon after. By the time Chris Schofield was introduced into the attack Sussex we under massive run-rate pressure but he nonetheless bowled some good deliveries and ended with 4-22, including the final wicket to fall, that of Monty Panesar for a first ball duck.

It was as comprehensive a victory as we have seen this season, against a very good, albeit slightly short-of-form Sussex side. We now move on to a major domestic final at Lord's against final-specialists Somerset, sure to be a massive test but we really are getting on something of a roll at the moment. I said at the start of the season that the CB40 was probably our best chance of winning something, it hasn't quite happened the way I thought it would, but we are still there!

The ECB have confirmed that England players who are fit and selected will be available for the final, which means Jade Dernbach will play for us. What that means for Chris Tremlett and even Kevin Pietersen I don't know. For now though, let's just focus on the the major positive - Surrey are 80 overs away from a trophy - just to be in the final is a real achievement. The players can be very proud but most of all, take a bow Rory Hamilton-Brown and Chris Adams, I hope you enjoy this!