Ansari and the weather save Surrey on final day

Surrey's game with Warwickshire petered out into a rain affected draw, with 35 overs lost to the weather over the final two days. But the weather wouldn't have mattered had Zafar Ansari not played the sort of rearguard innings that the situation demanded. He ended unbeaten on 83 to rescue the game.

In his first class career before this innings he had faced just 553 deliveries, yesterday evening and today alone he faced 257 balls. He was ably assisted late in the day by a controlled innings from Jason Roy, the likes of which we rarely see from him but it was no less impressive for that. He ended with 42 from 101 balls (having been 9 from 55 balls at one stage) to stave off any fears of a collapse after Harinath and de Bruyn departed for not many runs.

Warwickshire were guilty of some lapses in the field, de Bruyn was dropped twice by close-in fielders but ultimately that didn't cost them a huge amount. Ansari and Roy did a fine job of digging in for their side. After the mammoth total that the opposition posted batting out the game, even bearing in mind the rain and the flat pitch, will have given the team a good lift.

A draw is only worth three points these days, but that's three more points than we'd have ended up with had we collapsed in a heap today. Those three points could be critical come September.

There is plenty to take heart from in this game. In the absence of an experienced pro in any kind of form, the younger players stood up. Ansari is clearly something quite special, always calm and composed, he is not only a key batsman for Surrey's future, but also a future captain. Towards the end of the day there was a hundred in sight but he maintained his composure, he batted for the team, not for himself.

However it's not all rosy. Facing the prospect of the next Championship game without Meaker or Tremlett, Jon Lewis in the midst of a lengthy lean spell and Dernbach returning from injury, the bowling is now also a concern. Linley must be considered, and Jordan must not on the strength of this showing.

We have come away from Trent Bridge and Edgbaston with draws. Although neither was a vintage performance, we have stood up to be counted against the best in the division. The next game, against Durham, now takes on extra significance. It goes without saying that we must avoid defeat and really a win is all but essential.

Surrey face massive battle to save game

Surrey closed day three still 247 runs behind with ten second innings wickets in hand, and face having to bat through day four to save the game.

Surrey's first innings had begun so positively, although Ansari was lost to a fine Woakes delivery Burns and Harinath put on a superb fighting recovery with an 83 run second wicket partnership. Harinath though could not last a single over on day three as he was caught behind off Keith Barker. That was part of a collapse of six wickets for 58 runs. Burns was the fifth of those to fall for an excellent 77 but de Bruyn, Roy, Davies and Jordan added just 30 runs between them. Chris Jordan scored five fewer runs than he gave away in first innings no balls. To say he owes the team some runs is understating matters.

A battling performance from Batty, Meaker and Lewis dragged the Surrey total in to respectability but the follow on target of 421 was always going to be a massive ask. Warwickshire eventually took the final wicket, that of Murali Kartik, with the total at 286. They gave away just 10 extras, or 3.4%, while we handed Warwickshire over 10% of their total.

Burns and Ansari strode out again late on the third day to face the new ball, and again they showed that there is nothing to be terrified of in the pitch. What will be encouraging them is that Jeetan Patel is yet to take a wicket in 17 overs. But Warwickshire have an awful lot of quality besides him. Batting out three sessions is not beyond us, but it is a mountainous task.

To make matters worse Durham pulled off a cracking come-from-behind victory against Middlesex by just 15 runs to move to within 12 points of us. With the steely Paul Collingwood at the helm, and bags of experience in their lineup, that win may just prove a spark to their season. The game with them at the Riverside is now utterly crucial, a game in which they will presumably be able to call on the services of Graham Onions, while we will be without Stuart Meaker. Worcestershire, just eight points behind us, now have two games in hand. In short, the task of staving off relegation is getting ever harder.

Surrey fight back late on day one

Warwickshire will probably feel they have the edge at the end of an up and down day one, but two wickets late in the day will give Surrey reason for hope overnight.

Chris Adams joined Rory Hamilton-Brown on the sidelines for this game. He has apparently been given leave to recover from the events of June and subsequent weeks. Where someone's health, mental or physical, is concerned then clearly that must take precedence and I hope he recovers quickly. However I do think the timing is slightly odd, coming just after a period when we had a full week without a game. That aside though, the strangest decision is that of the club. To make no reference to it when the squad was announced, or even this morning, leaving the supporters in the dark somewhat is most unwelcome. It can only lead to speculation (including by me, which was perhaps unwise).

The club is now left in a situation with a captain on indefinite leave, a vice captain that never captains and a coach who appears to have been ordered to take time off. Not an ideal situation for what Richard Gould himself refers to as an "arduous" run-in.

On the field, Gareth Batty returned to the side and promptly lost the toss. His opposite number elected to bat first under sunny skies. Chris Jordan was selected ahead of Tim Linley and Jade Dernbach was also left out, presumably for reasons of fitness.

The first session most definitely belonged to Warwickshire. A good opening spell of fast bowling from Stuart Meaker drew no wickets, but did give him figures of 5-3-6-0. At the other end Jon Lewis was expensive, conceding 36 runs from his opening salvo of seven overs. It was announced today that Meaker will play for the England Lions next month, meaning he will likely miss the Championship games with Middlesex and Durham. He will be sorely missed, since a sterling start to the season his new ball partner Lewis has taken just five wickets in five games at a cost of 70 runs apiece.

Warwickshire made it to 130 without loss before Chris Jordan made the breakthrough, clean bowling Varun Chopra. That began a good afternoon session which saw them take four wickets and reduce the opposition to 197-4. The resurgent Troughton and stand-in keeper Johnson put together a fine recovery and it wasn't until the second new ball in the 86th over that Surrey made another breakthrough. Johnson fell to Meaker and the same bowler had Rikki Clarke superbly caught by Rory Burns.

That left Warwickshire 322-6 and with their noses slightly ahead. 43 of the home side's total came in extras, with 22 runs coming from no balls by Jordan and Lewis. Giving away runs like that is criminal. Troughton is still at the crease on 74, with Woakes for company on 12. That very pair put on over 200 together at Taunton last week, so getting one of them early tomorrow is of paramount importance.

The wicket is, by all accounts, dry but only two of six wickets to fall did so to spin. Given that we have two spinners (Batty seems reluctant to bowl Ansari as a third spinner) I hope the wicket will take increasing turn tomorrow, and Jeetan Patel has an off game. We are still very much in this game but early wickets tomorrow morning are an absolute must.

Squad named for tough Warwickshire assignment

Chris Adams and his relegation-threatened troupe travel to Edgbaston this weekend to face Division One pace-setters Warwickshire. It could prove to be their toughest test of a troubled season.

The 13 man squad, and a possible XI is as follows:

Zafar Ansari
Rory Burns
Arun Harinath
Zander de Bruyn
Steven Davies
Jason Roy
Gareth Batty
Murali Kartik
Stuart Meaker
Jade Dernbach
Jon Lewis

12th men: Chris Jordan, Tim Linley

The name conspicuous by its absence is of course Matthew Spriegel's who after one innings in a rain-ruined game seems to have been summarily cast aside, with no apparent reference to an injury. Frankly I am bemused by this decision, and not for the first time this season. I have nothing against Chris Jordan but why should he get so many more opportunities to prove himself in Championship cricket when Spriegel gets barely any? Spriegel, whose contract extension expires at the end of the year, must be increasingly frustrated at being left on the sidelines. He has not set the world alight with his performances this year but he is a solid pro, an excellent fielder and has captained the Second XI on many occasions.

Arun Harinath, who would have played two games ago but for an injury, replaces Spriegel in the side. If the batting order in this week's Second XI game is anything to go by, he will slot in at three rather than continuing the opening batsman merry-go-round. Ansari and Burns performed more than adequately against Nottinghamshire and Burns made another good 80+ score for the seconds. I have my doubts as to whether Ansari is a long term option at the top though, I feel he is much better suited to the middle order.

The batting is a conundrum at the moment, the experienced members of the top six are short of form and those in any sort of form are short of experience. Somehow they have to find a way to make it work.

On the bowling front Jade Dernbach makes a welcome return from the side injury which kept him out of much of England's ODI series against Australia. Assuming he is fit I would expect him to slot into the side, despite Tim Linley's seven wicket haul against Warwickshire's Second XI. Given how prolific Jeetan Patel has been for Warwickshire this season I would guess Adams will plump for two spinners, meaning the captaincy will return to Gareth Batty. As for the vice captaincy, well, who knows?

Warwickshire are not top of the County Championship by accident, they are a seriously good outfit. Their top order batsmen have not been in the best form, though Chopra has over 500 runs to his name, but it hasn't really mattered, such is the strength of their middle and lower order. Rikki Clarke is averaging 67, Chris Woakes 51. Their one weak link, skipper Jim Troughton, is no longer a weak link with scores of 134 and 81 in recent games. Their bowling is strong too, Patel is a low key overseas signing but no less effective for it, he has 34 wickets at 22 this season and Woakes, Clarke, Barker and Wright will all chip in as well.

If we thought Nottinghamshire were a tough side to face, title-chasing Warwickshire are tougher still. The weather may have a say on Sunday, but otherwise this game looks set fair. Surrey can take heart from their game at the Oval earlier this season though, where they reduced Warwickshire to 37-4 chasing 222 before Ambrose and Clarke saw them home.

Six games remaining, six games in which to retain our first division status. If our bowling attack performs to the level they should, we can run any side in the country close. But Warwickshire are a tough, experienced side who churn out results with ruthless efficiency. If we can get a result at Edgbaston it could prove the spark to revive our season, if we're steamrollered, it could spell the end.

Surrey play it safe with draw at Trent Bridge

After losing considerably more than half the game to the weather, a positive result was always unlikely and so it proved as the stand in captains shook hands on a draw just after 6pm today.

The Nottingamshire coach, Mick Newell had said yesterday that he expected both captains to be amenable to forcing a result and apparently Zander de Bruyn was offered a scenario by Chris Read in the morning but declined. Instead he elected to secure some bonus points with bat and ball. It may seem a negative decision from de Bruyn but he was probably mindful of the poor batting form of much of his side.

Read and Voges resumed for Nottinghamshire on 178-5 and the Notts skipper was positive from the word go. De Bruyn kept faith with Chris Jordan who'd bowled a testing spell on Wednesday, as he threw him the ball this morning but Jordan couldn't replicate his form of two days previously. He bowled nine overs for 39 runs and was rarely threatening.

Jon Lewis was brought into the attack at the other end and picked up the wicket of Voges leg before for 59, he and Read had added an excellent 145 runs in good time. Read continued to be positive, as did his new partner Ben Philips and the pair added 75 in just 15 overs. Read's innings was cut short just two runs shy of an excellent century by Stuart Meaker. Meaker continued his good work throughout the morning and also picked up the wickets of Philips and Adams to end with 5-78, including 3-30 from ten overs today. It was his third five-for of the season and took his tally for 2012 to 35 at just over 20 apiece.

Surrey had therefore secured maximum bowling points and had a little more than 50 overs to secure as many batting points as possible. Ansari and Burns were again sent in to open and made a much better fist of it than against Lancashire. They forged our equal-best opening partnership of the season, not bad for a pair who only boast 14 first class matches between them. They were parted when Ansari got a good ball from Andy Carter and was bowled for 31.

That brought Jason Roy to the crease and he continued his recent resurgence. He and Burns put on an entertaining partnership of 82 in less than 11 overs to push Surrey towards a first batting point. Burns' dismissal, again bowled but this time by Adams for a quite excellent 79, brought about a mini-collapse from 167-1 to 177-4 as de Bruyn and Davies also departed in quick succession.

However Jason Roy continued on his merry way as only Roy knows how. He raced to 50 from just 38 balls, reaching the milestone with a trademark straight six off Samit Patel. Later in his innings he reverse swept the England spinner for successive sixes before he was stumped off the same bowler trying for another big hit, his 83 came from just 50 balls. There was a hundred for the taking and its a shame he didn't get there, but his rapid fire innings propelled Surrey to a first batting point and towards a second at 215-5.

Matthew Spriegel, who had also been finding the boundary nicely, was also out with the score on 215 as Andre Adams found his mojo with a spell of three wickets for 19 runs. That left Chris Jordan and Stuart Meaker needing to find 35 runs in 9 or so overs to secure a second batting point. Meaker did the bulk of the work with 29 not out from 36 deliveries to complete another impressive match. The 250 mark was reached with two balls to spare.

A draw at Trent Bridge is no mean feat, even if the weather did play a huge part in this game. However with Worcestershire winning at Old Trafford three of the bottom four in the table now look mighty close. We are four points ahead of Worcestershire, who have a game in hand over us, and a point behind Lancashire, over whom we have a game in hand. There are still six games remaining and all is to play for, but we have to start winning games if we want to be sure of safety. The rest of the season will be a huge test for Chris Adams, I have no doubt that we have the players to survive in this division, but it will still be mighty tough to do so.

Solanki signs on for 2013

The proud recipient of the 2010 Surrey Cricket Blog award for Opposition Player of the Year, Vikram Solanki, has signed a two year deal with Surrey from 2013.

Chris Adams said just last week that the recruitment process would begin immediately, but I wasn't quite expecting the first signing to be confirmed so soon. Given that Adams said that he would be looking for experience, and Solanki's contract was up for renewal at Worcestershire this year, it seems a perfectly logical choice.

Moreover, Solanki is a wonderful batsman to watch and has almost 300 first class matches under his belt, scoring 31 hundreds in the process. At 36 years of age, I'm slightly surprised that he's been given a two year deal but he would have been unlikely to sign for a single season and the fact that Adams was desperate for wise old heads will not have gone unnoticed by Solanki himself.

Although he's not had the best of years in 2012, averaging just 26 in the Championship so far, he was far more impressive in 2011 in scoring over 1,000 runs at 42, all but topping the Worcestershire batting and bagging himself three hundreds. Hopefully he can replicate that for us, rather than his 2012 form. He is also a more than handy limited overs players, as we found to our cost in the CB40 in 2010 where he scored a sparkling hundred.

A cursory glance at our batting order for the last couple of games tells its own story. There is bags of potential, but not many years of first class experience between them. Of course we'd all like to see an XI packed with Surrey players born and bred, but having that and having success just is not possible in the short term. Solanki will be a leader in the dressing room, that will be what Adams has signed him for, and it's hard to fault the logic of that. He may not score millions of runs, but I'm sure he'll be worth his place in the side.

Surrey on top, but Read and Voges fight

The wonderful summer of 2012 continued unabated today as 54 overs were wiped from the day's play at Trent Bridge. At the early close of play Nottinghamshire were 178-5.

Play started on time this morning as Surrey won the toss and elected to field. The man calling the toss for Surrey today was not Gareth Batty as we have come to expect, but Zander de Bruyn in his stead. Such were the seam friendly conditions that Adams decided he could not go in with two spinners and the stand-in skipper was the man jettisoned. Given that Steven Davies was appointed vice captain at the start of 2011 it is strange that de Bruyn was called on to skipper instead, indeed it makes it harder to ignore the fact that Davies has not yet signed an extension to his current contract which expires this year.

Whether Batty was party to the decision or not (one hopes he was), I think this was an odd call, in an increasingly long line of odd calls. Batty is widely regarded as the glue that has held the dressing room together in recent weeks so to see him cast aside in favour of Murali Kartik is disappointing, Kartik himself has hardly set the world alight with his Championship bowling. If spin was going to play such a small part in the match, is Kartik really a much better option than an in form Batty? 

Meanwhile, Tim Linley was preferred in place of Chris Tremlett who was not risked for a second consecutive Championship match, and Chris Jordan also came in as a fourth fast bowling option.

The match began at a frenetic pace with openers Hales and Wessels carrying on where they left off in last night's CB40 match, five balls in the first two overs were pinged to the boundary. By the end of the fourth over Nottinghamshire had 30 runs on the board. However in the sixth over came the breakthrough, Tim Linley finding the edge of Wessels' bat to send him back for a run-a-ball 23.

His dismissal served to quieten things down somewhat as a period of three overs for two runs followed. As the pressure built Jon Lewis picked up the wicket (rather fortunately) of Alex Hales who could only watch as a ball he'd defended dribbled on to his stumps. De Bruyn had introduced Jordan to the attack and the effect was almost immediate as he trapped Lumb lbw with the first ball of his second over. It was a fine start for Jordan who reeled off three maidens with his first three overs.

Meaker was then let loose and similarly he had success in his second over as Samit Patel edged a ball going down the leg side. Always a poor shot to get out to but in truth Meaker had started excellently despite conceding six from his opening over. That left Notts 59-4 but so powerful is their batting that you're never truly on top until you get well into the tail.

Surrey made good progress in that direction though as Meaker picked up his second wicket with the dangerous James Taylor edging him into the slips. At 84-5 we were looking rampant. However Chris Read and Adam Voges had other ideas. The same pair had put on 143 to stymie the Middlesex bowlers last week and while dodging the showers today they put on another 94 together, and will return to the crease unbeaten tomorrow morning.

It is the kind of captain's knock we've come to expect from Read, and Voges is the sort of overseas player Chris Adams probably dreams of. The bowling wasn't at its best though, 28 boundaries came in 42 overs and only one bowler (Jordan) was able to restrict the flow of runs to below four an over. Voges was also dropped on five by Spriegel in the slips off the bowling of Meaker. He could yet make us pay dearly for that mistake.

As ever it is very hard to tell where the balance of power lies in a match when only one side has batted, but Surrey will probably sleep relatively easy tonight. Of course they would like to have seen the back of one of Read or Voges today but persistent cloudy conditions tomorrow, if they don't dump too much rain, should keep the bowlers interested. Our batsmen will already have seen some variable bounce today which won't make their reply terribly easy, but the bowlers can go some way to relieving a bit of the pressure with early wickets tomorrow.