Honours even after late Notts stand

Well, we’ve been here before haven’t we, where our bowlers have got us into a strong position before we have let the opposition off the hook with a big lower order partnership.

After restricting Nottinghamshire to 181-7, an 8^th wicket stand of 66 between Steven Mullaney and Ajmal Shahzad has made it all square heading into Day Two at Trent Bridge.

In conditions that looked as if they would be favourable to the seamers, Gareth Batty won the toss for the second consecutive game and elected to bat first. The team news was that Chris Tremlett and Jon Lewis had been left out from the 13 man squad, which was no surprise to me, but I would have been inclined to pick Lewis, but he just doesn’t look like getting a game.

 

Jade Dernbach got us off to a superb start when he bowled Alex Hales all ends up in the third over of the day. Run scoring began to look very difficult for the Notts pair of Cowan and Lumb, especially against Tim Linley who recorded figures of 10-7-7-0 in the morning session. Despite that good start, it looked as if we would only claim one wicket in the session, but Meaker then bowled Aussie Cowan with a quick yorker, to reduce the hosts to 59-2 at lunch.

Captain James Taylor, in for usual captain Chris Read who had a neck injury, looked to up the scoring rate after the break with Lumb, but Meaker claimed his second wicket when Lumb looped a leading edge to Linley at mid-off when on 44, to kick-start a good session for us.

Samit Patel and Taylor looked to be positive, and put on a 60 run partnership as they looked to gain back some initiative, but 4 wickets in 13 overs really put Surrey back on top. First Patel was caught in the slips off Linley, before Meaker bowled Wessels in emphatic style. The dangerous Taylor played on to Linley when on 47, and the afternoon session was capped off by Meaker having Paul Franks caught behind, as Notts went to tea on 185-7.

In ideal circumstances, we would have had Notts bowled out for less than 220 at the most, but this is Surrey, and we never do it the easy way. Mullaney dominated a partnership with Shahzad, and even though they weren’t going that quickly, they really started to frustrate like so many late order partnerships have done against us over the last few years. Even the introduction of the new ball at 20 past 5 didn’t seem to fluster either Mullaney or Shahzad, as they began to turn the game day back into their favour, with Mullaney moving to his half century with a boundary off Dernbach.

Dernbach did manage to finally remove Shahzad for an 84 ball 8, and Linley trapped Mullaney LBW for his 3^rd wicket when on 68, but their job had already been done in getting their side back into the day.

So if you would have asked me at the beginning of the day whether I would have been happy to have Notts 273-9 at the close, then I would have probably said yes. But considering the position we had them in, then it is disappointing. However, I’m so used to it now with Surrey, that I half expect it. I know I’ve said it before but we are not clinical enough with the ball, and something needs to be done about it if we want to start winning games. We can’t keep passing up good openings in matches; we really need to be more ruthless.

Well batted to Mullaney though, it wasn’t easy to bat today and he looked at ease at the crease throughout his innings. Tomorrow we will have to knock the last wicket over ASAP and set upon the task of trying to build a first innings lead.