Davies and Roy beaten by rain

The YB40 game between Derbyshire and Surrey has been abandoned due to persistent rain at the County Ground.

In a game already shortened to 19 overs a side, we reached 100-1 off of 9 overs before the rain came again, and the umpires called the game off just before 9:30.

By the state of the outfield, it looked as if there would be no play at all, but thanks to some great work by the groundsman we finally got underway at 7:45. Derbyshire elected to bat first and the 3 to be left out of the squad were Tremlett, Meaker and Keedy, as Ponting and Azhar made their first appearance of the season.

Jason Roy and Steve Davies started the innings brilliantly, and if they could play like they did for the T20 this summer, then we are in for a treat. They took the attack to some rather poor Derbyshire bowling, racing along at over 12 an over. They were both at their fluent best, with Davies’ innings all about touch and stroke play, and Roy (42*) bludgeoning the ball to the boundary, including a stunning Pietersen-esque flick over mid-wicket for 6.

Davies reached his 50 off just 20 balls, and was showing his true class before being caught off young off spinner Burgoyne. Straight after Davies went however, the rain came at 100-1 off 9 overs and looked to have destroyed our chances of victory.

The rain was heavy but nevertheless the umpires were determined to get a game, and when it relented they announced a 10 over game would take place from 9:30. We still had to bat one over to complete the mandatory 10 in our innings, but 5 minutes before the game was scheduled to resume, the rain came again and the game had to be abandoned.

So that’s disappointing, especially after the start that Roy and Davies gave us. It looked as if we would win the game as Derby just didn’t look up for it, and were clearly inferior to our international line up. However, it wasn’t to be, and now we will probably have to win nearly all of our remaining games in the group stage. We have 6 points from 5 games so far, 2 points behind leaders Hampshire who have played the same amount of games. With 14 points up for grabs I personally think that we need to claim 12 of those, including beating Hampshire, because despite us beating them handsomely back at the beginning of the month, they do look a good outfit yet again.

Now we head into the biggest game of the season so far, the Championship game against the same opposition tomorrow, and it is a must win game for us. After that we are back in YB40 action at Chelmsford on Monday evening before the Guildford Festival starting a week today.