Surrey comfortably beaten on final day

Well the inevitable happened on the final day of the Championship game at the Oval, after Durham chased down their relatively small target with 5 wickets to spare.

Set 181 for victory, Durham completed their 3^rd victory of the campaign, putting them back top of Division one, and inflicting Surrey’s first defeat of the season in the process.

Starting the morning on 164-6, a lead of just 115, Batty and Wilson started well and began to grind out a possible competitive total. However, in the space of three deliveries, where Batty was LBW for 27 and Wilson caught for 26, the game swung well into Durham’s favour. 19 from Tim Linley took us to 229 all out, a lead of 180, and even though the pitch was clearly favouring the spinner with Borthwick claiming figures of 6-70, it was never going to be enough to force a result.

We did get off to the perfect start though, as to the final delivery of the first over, Will Smith was caught behind to give us some hope, and send a few jitters through the Durham camp. However, like he showed in the first innings, the big wicket would have been that of Mark Stoneman, who naturally scores at a high tempo, and his innings alone all but sealed the win for Durham.

We just couldn’t keep the run rate down and apply pressure, and the 100 partnership between Stoneman and Borthwick turned out to be the match winner in the end. Batty did have Borthwick, before Stoneman (67) and Benkenstein fell in the space of 3 deliveries, to Meaker and Linley respectively, leaving Durham 55 to win with 5 wickets left.

However, despite losing Collingwood to Gary Keedy’s first wicket of the match, it never looked like we would force a dramatic collapse, as Ben Stokes and Phil Mustard saw their side through to a 5 wicket win.

Even though we expected it after yesterday’s play, it is always disappointing to lose any sort of game in cricket. At key times in the match, we came out second best. On the first day, losing 5 wickets for less than 20 runs was criminal, whatever the state of the pitch, and that for me was the main reason we lost the match. 181 was never going to be enough and if we batted better in the first innings like we should have, then we would have set a higher total and most likely come away with the points.

I don’t really want to single out individuals, as everyone had poor moments in the match, with Davies’ dismissals particularly sticking in my mind. However, the form of Gary Keedy is very worrying. On a pitch that was made to suit his style of bowling, to only pick up one wicket, and that being when the game was all but up, is poor. He is vastly experienced and should thrive on occasions like this, but it never seemed like it was coming out right, struggling to keep his economy rate down throughout the game.

On the other hand, Gareth Batty picked up 6 wickets in the game, an even though he only collected one in the second innings, his five in the first innings prevented a much bigger lead than 49. However, Batty isn’t faultless, as his decision to not bring Meaker into the attack until the 33^rd over was a strange one, and the wrong one, as he bowled the dangerous Stoneman in his first over.

There are lots of if’s and but’s to think about, as there always is with cricket, but the simple matter is that we deserved to lose that game. We didn’t bat well enough, and didn’t take advantage of the spinning conditions that we prepared, with Buckley and Borthwick claiming double the amount of wickets that Batty and Keedy could muster.

Three draws from three games was a solid, if not brilliant, start, but now add the defeat to that which constitutes to a very poor start to the season. We certainly have a battle on our hands to stay in the division, especially now that we don’t have our skipper. Is it a coincidence that our first defeat is the first game he wasn’t here for? I’m not sure about that, but let’s not use that as an excuse for doing poor this season, because the players can do better than they have shown over the last 4 days, and hopefully they can show that on Wednesday at Trent Bridge against Notts.