Setting the tone? I hope not....

So Derbyshire finish the day on 306-5, with the imperious Chris Rogers still there on 178 not out from 282 balls. Couple of wickets for Batty, couple for Afzaal and one for Linley.

I am reluctant to be too negative, and I'm sure this pitch is a cracker for batting, but Derbyshire aren't the best side in the division and its a bit worrying that despite a clearout from last season, we're still managing to field the same seam attack from the end of last year. A seam attack which never seemed capable or likely to take 20 wickets in a game.

Where is Tremlett? His fitness might be being 'managed' but he played no pre-season and I've heard no report of an injury, so what's the reason for his absence? And Rao, our overseas replacement for Chawla - I thought he'd been signed for three championship games and he's missing this one, where is he?! Some explanation is needed from Surrey here.

I would expect the likes of Afzaal, Davies and of course Ramps to make hay on this pitch, Derbyshire look like setting a big total so we'll need them to. With our tail starting at seven, the burden weighs heavily on our top order. Here's hoping Surrey come out with a bit of fight tomorrow morning and bowl us back into the match.

Oh and also, I'm hearing word that at least two catches were dropped - this is inexcusable (unless of course they were impossible chances), Adams said that a lot of work had been done on fielding over the winter. Last two seasons drops have cost us far too dear, and we can't afford to have that happen again.

UPDATE: According to the Cricinfo report, Rogers was dropped on 46, Borrington dropped on 7, drops have already cost us a grand total of 146 runs and the season is one day old. Bad omen!

Surrey squad for Derbyshire game tomorrow

Chris Adams has named the squad for the first County Championship game starting at 11am tomorrow (at long last!), few names missing very disappointingly, no Rao yet, no Tremlett and no Michael Brown:

Rory Hamilton-Brown (c)
Arun Harinath
Matthew Spriegel
Mark Ramprakash
Usman Afzaal
Steven Davies (wk)
Gareth Batty
Stuart Meaker
Jade Dernbach
Andre Nel
Tim Linley
Chris Schofield

I maintain that I don't think Linley offers enough of a wicket taking threat. He keeps it nice and tight, but just doesn't take wickets, and wickets is what we need people! I fear that squad could be a batsman light, thought I suppose if Schofield and Spriegel continue their form of the last part of last season we might be ok.

To hear that Tremlett's workload is 'being managed' is a bit worrying at such an early stage, I'd have thought a good start to the season to give some momentum would be the priority. Clearly Adams doesn't think he's up to a four day game just yet, I'd like to know a bit more on that situation.

The Derbyshire squad looks pretty evenly matched with our lads too:

Chris Rogers
Wayne Madsen
Paul Borrington
Garry Park
Greg Smith
Dan Redfern
Robin Peterson
Chesney Hughes
Graham Wagg
Lee Goddard
Tim Groenewald
Steffan Jones
Mark Footitt

Not world beaters, but some real quality in there. Rogers is a class act, pure and simple. Peterson has international pedigree and Graham Wagg is a threat. Depends on the pitch, but this one could be headed for a draw. Though with a few days sunshine forecast ahead we should get all the overs in, so you never know!

Surrey sign Andrew Symonds!!!

As I called for here and here, Surrey have heeded my wise words and signed a genuine matchwinner for the T20 Cup in Andrew Symonds. Fair play to Mackay and Adams, they've obviously been working on this, and what a result.

If Chawla is available and the BCCI don't throw that particular toy out of the pram, a T20 side with him, Symonds, Nel, Ramps, Afzaal and Rory H-B in it could give us a bit more to cheer about than we've had in the past. Excellent news!

Another one that got away.....

David Warner has signed for Middlesex...somewhere deep down I thought we might dip into our deep pockets and sign him. Alas no. Is it just me or is there a lack of ambition here from Surrey? Middlesex only found out a couple of weeks ago that Yuvraj wasn't coming, so they got straight on to signing a world class replacement...we've been one overseas signing short for the T20 Cup for months and....nothing.

The overseas players are a statement of intent, its important. Afridi, Mendis, Razzaq, Warner, Pollard, Morkel, Gilchrist...all players NOT coming to the Oval...sort it out Adams!

Four day cricket is almost back....

It feels like its been an age since I last went to the Oval and saw a red ball bowled, but come this weekend I'll be back there to see the start of Surrey's 2010 County Championship campaign.

The pre-season friendly against Cambridge did little to inspire, the batsman did what was expected and scored plenty of runs, the bowlers were a little less than incisive, though Dernbach's four-for is encouraging.  Linley isn't up to it at this level if you ask me, Jewell is still too young to judge and we haven't learnt much about Stuart Meaker that we didn't know already - pretty quick but not taking the wickets we'd like.

That said, the attack should take on a pretty different look come the weekend.  Rao will presumably be available, Tremlett and Nel likewise, on early season pitches that could make for a very potent attack.  To fit four seamers in might be a bit much to ask, if we want a spinning option as well that means Gareth Batty at number seven, definitely a place too high, but that would give us an awful lot of bowling:

Brown
Harinath
Ramprakash
Afzaal
Hamilton-Brown (c)
Davies (wk)
Batty
Nel
Tremlett
Rao
Dernbach

Alternatively, a more cautious approach would be to put Spriegel at six, and have him, Hamilton-Brown and Afzaal doing the spinning duties, if the wicket is a bit green and there's a bit of cloud about, that might not be such a bad idea.

Brown
Harinath
Ramprakash
Afzaal
Hamilton-Brown (c)
Spriegel
Davies (wk)
Nel
Tremlett
Rao
Dernbach

Whatever the lineup, its an awful lot stronger than we had last year and I'm an awful lot more confident now than I was then!

40 overs, 469 runs, 10 wickets. Who is Man of the Match?

Here's a few of the numbers from today's Chennai vs Rajasthan match:

Murali Vijay: 126 runs off 56 balls
Albie Morkel: 62 runs off 34 balls
Naman Ojha: 94 runs off 55 balls
Shane Watson: 60 runs off 25 balls

Albie Morkel: 4 overs, no maidens, 2 wickets for 56 runs
Sudeep Tyagi: 4 overs, no maidens, no wicket for 45 runs
Murali: 4 overs, no maidens, 1 wicket for 52 runs
Yusuf Pathan: 4 overs, no maidens, no wicket for 44 runs
Shaun Tait: 4 overs, no maidens, no wicket for 44 runs

All of the above are remarkable, remarkable in the batsmen's cases for their phenomenal strike rate, to score 127 off 56 balls is some achievement make no mistake, remarkable in the bowlers' cases because of their horrible economy rates. But, and its a big but, the following figures are the most remarkable of all:

Doug Bollinger: 4 overs, no maidens, 2 wickets for 15 runs.

You read that right, Doug Bollinger, he of the most slappable face in cricket, conceded just 15 runs from his four over spell. Fifteen runs given away in a match where 469 runs were conceded in 40 overs, a collective run rate of 11.75 runs per over. 246 plays 223 wouldn't look out of place in a One Day International, but a Twenty20 match?!

Bollinger: Slappable, but bloody good.

Anyway, what is the significance of that? Well, he was shamefully denied the Man of the Match award, that was given to M Vijay for his spectacular hundred. Spectacular it may have been, and on another day entirely worthy of the MoM award, but of all the figures above, which set stands out from the rest? Which set of figures unquestionably won the match for his side? Which set of figures was completely unique among all the others? Bollinger's.

There's a serious point here, if the IPL does not see fit to award the man of the match award to a bowler who bowled fully 10% of the overs in a match but only conceded 3% of the runs, and for good measure took 20% of the wickets to fall, when exactly does a bowler get the man of the match award?! I'm all for big sixes and high strike rates, but the bowlers need to be recognised too, and Bollinger's performance today wasn't just the best of the match, it was in my opinion the best of the tournament so far.

Stat Attack: Which overseas players are best in the IPL?

On the interminable bus journey to work in the morning I was thinking about how Royal Challengers Bangalore have based much of their overseas contingent around South Africans, and I wondered if one particular set of overseas players has a better record in the IPL than others. So I gorged myself at the IPL stats table to find the answer...this is what I found:

Unsurprisingly Australian players top most of the charts, there are more of them in the IPL and have been for the first three years. But it doesn't end there, they also top the averages charts, from 236 innings played by Australians since the start of the IPL, they average an impressive 33.3, clear of South Africans - 30.7 from 206 innings and Sri Lankans - 26.8 from 133 innings.

Aussie Shaun Marsh averages a spectacular 67 in the IPL

Furthermore, they also top the charts on strike rates - those 33.3 runs have come at a strike rate, across the board, of 136.4 runs scored for every 100 runs faced. They're only marginally clear of New Zealand at 134, but significantly ahead of Sri Lankans on 129 and in a different league alltogether to South Africans languishing on 118. The English by the way only just nudge in ahead of the Saffers here, with a strike rate of 120.

Australia also have significantly more 50s and 100s than any other set of overseas players with five hundreds, no other country has more than one. They also have scored 44% more 50s than the next country in that particular list, South Africa.

So what about the bowling, maybe someone can redress the balance here? Well, yes actually, the Sri Lankan contingent does so. While Aussies have taken more wickets (148) than anyone else, they have done so at a higher average (26.4) than Pakistani (18.5), English (22.1) and Sri Lankan (22.8) bowlers. Similarly they languish in fourth place in the bowling strike rate stakes, only taking a wicket every 20.8 balls, behind Pakistani (14.2), English (17.5) and Sri Lankan (20.4) bowlers. While Pakistani and English bowlers do feature prominently here, it is only Sri Lankans who have bowled a significant number of overs and can therefore produce a truly representative stat.

Sri Lanka's Lasith Malinga takes wickets, but also doesn't give away too much.

The Australians regain some pride slightly with their economy rate, coming in only behind Sri Lankan bowlers (who give away just 6.6 runs per over), giving away 7.4 runs per over. Incidentally South African and English players are very close behind here, with economy rates of 7.4 and 7.5 respectively.

So basically, you want your batters from Australia, and your bowlers from Sri Lanka. In short you want Murali, Malinga, Shane Watson and Shaun Marsh. If you want a wicketkeeper, Gilchrist is your man. Honourable mentions here though for the likes of Ross Taylor, Hayden, McCullum, Yusuf Abdulla and Langeveldt.

So what of England's players? Well its difficult to draw any conclusions because of the tiny sample, relatively speaking. For example Shane Warne and Dirk Nannes have both each bowled significantly more overs than all of England's representatives combined. English players have only bowled 14% of the overs Australians have, and have only batted 20% if the innings Australians have. No country has bowled fewer overs in the IPL, and only Pakistani players have batted fewer times - and they're not even in it this year! Australian players have scored almost as many fifties as English players have played innings (42 to 48).

Dirk Nannes: bowled lots of overs

This could have serious ramifications. Of course English players will play a few Twenty20 Cup matches (though the centrally contracted players, KP, Collie, Morgan etc. will play virtually none) but they won't encounter the quality of batting and bowling that they will in the IPL. With Twenty20 increasingly becoming the fulcrum of world cricket, its more and more important that English players are well versed in the requisite skills for that format, and the IPL has to be seen as a way to acquire these. Not that its especially likely that many more English player will be headed that way with the ongoing tensions between the ECB and the BCCI! Also, I'm not sure there's that many who could force their way in to the current sides.

With the sheer volume of Twenty20 cricket they're playing, I would suggest that Australia are well placed to improve their lamentable record in that particular format, and they may well dominate, just like they have all the others. Which is incredibly annoying. Anyway, This was done mainly to satisfy my own curiosity, but its at least partially interesting!

NOTE: The stats are accurate up to the end of the Kolkata-Deccan game yesterday evening, and while there mayb be a couple of players missing here and there, I'm pretty confident I've included 95% of the overseas contingent of the IPL.