That this was Yorkshire’s best session of the match does not mean that the champions had the better of it, there continued to be too many deliveries that were more hard to reach than they were hard to play – a fact hard to pardon at the pace Hamilton
Ed Green26-Apr-2002Morning SessionThat this was Yorkshire’s best session of the match does not mean that the champions had the better of it, there continued to be too many deliveries that were more hard to reach than they were hard to play – a fact hard to pardon at the pace Hamilton and Fellows bowl at. As with yesterday Ryan Sidebotton was the pick of the bowlers, managing to pass the edge at times and to restrict the batsmen with his left arm seamers while the other quick bowlers were rattling along at better than five an over.The home side did, however, finally manage to dispose of the Surrey openers, Ward was first to go, bowled for seventy, with the score on 161 trying to continue the dominance he and Butcher had enjoyed over Chris Silverwood, he was shortly followed by Butcher playing at Kirby in similar fashion. The brief pause in scoring rate after that was the only respite the scorers had all session and was followed by yet another flurry of boundaries as Stewart weighed into Kirby and Ramprakash launched Fellows for the first six of the match. Surrey are 100 runs ahead at lunch on day 2 with Ramprakash looking comfortable and Stewart imperious.Afternoon SessionApril continues to shower the cricket following public with unaccustomed cheer as the sun continued to shine on Surrey’s tour de force, Stewart and Ramprakash continue to push on at four runs per over in front of another good crowd, Yorkshire’s slim hopes of saving this game are now dependent on either a huge change in the weather or a miraculous batting performance in the second innings – preferably both.It is as well that most MPs are too limited to appreciate cricket or on this evidence the county championship would surely be banned for cruelty, the sad truth about Yorkshire’s bowling figures is that for much of the time the run rate is only kept below a run a ball by the fact that neither batsman has been able to reach the damn thing. In this session Lehmann’s side have given up all pretence of trying to win the game by contrast their opponents streaked to a thousand runs for the season in only their second match having lost a grand total of ten wickets before Kirby finally got Ramprakash to edge behind with thescore on 309. It was a good delivery but the wicket was purchased in large part by the scarcity of reachable fodder, nobody can say though that his confrontations with Surrey have been anything less than high entertainment in three matches he has taken seven wickets for 230 at nearly five runs per over.The breakthrough seemed to give Yorkshire’s bowlers renewed hope as the next few overs, from Sidebottom and Kirby showed a fire and accuracy that had hitherto been lacking, for the first time in the game it looked as though two Yorkshire bowlers were intent on taking a wicket, but with the first innings lead marching towards two hundred it seemed too little too late. It was a lovely change to see Kirby putting the ball in the right place however, his whippy action appeared to straighten and he looked, for a while at least the bowler who brushed several teams aside last season.Despite the improved bowling the visitors continued to be able to keep the scoreboard ticking over, the pace with which they eliminated the home side and then ran up three hundred runs also allowed Ali Brown the luxury of a steady start, Yorkshire are one of the few teams in recent years to have contained the explosive middle order batsman restricting him to just a single century in recent seasons and dismissing him for numerous single figure scores. Fellows was brought back into the attack when Sidebottom tired with instructions to frustrate the batsmen while Kirby charged in at the other end. Stewart was not in the mood to throw away his wicket in the seventies having gifted it to Sussex on 99 the week before and Brown too was content to ride out the spell.Brown’s patience was such that his first boundary came forty minutes into his innings it ran out however shortly afterwards when he played loosely at a new bowler Gavin Hamilton who looked amazed to take the wicket – it was major a victory for the tykes, they’d finally got someone out for less than sixty. The arrival of Nadeem Shahid saw the scoring rate pick up almost straight away though as he slammed Hamilton for two boundaries in the the eighty ninth over before Stewart brought up the 350 in the ninetieth, seven bonus points to one a fair measure of the game’s progress to date.The biggest surprise of the afternoon session came shortly before the break when Stewart, for the second time in two innings got himself out in the nineties, caught by Wood from the mediocre, but at least often disciplined bowling Fellows for 96, Shahid and Azhar then took the score to within spitting distance of 400 and five batting points.Evening SessionWith the bounce of this pitch increasingly erratic and its cracks widening Shahid and Azhar set about the Yorkshire attack with alacrity. For the second game in succession the championship favourites lower middle order displayed a sense of duty to the cause of fast runs at any cost that even Stuart Surridge, champion of the fifties style of “positive cricket” would have found admirable. Their partnership lasted a bare fifty runs before Shahid’s departure prompted a mini-collapse which saw both Tudor and Bicknell depart cheaply, Azhar and Surrey’s last centurian, Ian Salisbury, who hadn’t actually had to bother batting in their previous demolition job then added yet another speedy fiftystand, Surrey eventually took the first innings lead to a vast 370 on a failing wicket, although it is arguable that they should have packed up and stopped the torture when Salisbury was caught for a brutal 27 from 28 balls.That Yorkshire were able to claim Surrey’s last five wickets for just eighty runs is pathetically small comfort, that four able batsmen sacrificed their wickets for a few quick runs in the opposing cause is ominous.The scale of Surrey’s first innings achievement and Bicknell and Tudor’s pique at being dismissed so cheaply was brought into sharp focus in the eight balls of Yorkshire’s second innings. In Martin Bicknell’s opening wicket maiden he beat, befuddled and drew an edge from Wood and then, to rub salt in the would it took the increasingly potent Alex Tudor just two balls to tear Richardson out clean bowled.The champions have been utterly outclassed in each of six sessions so far, they have little, or no, hope of survival in this game, their only crumbs of comfort are that Kirby joined Sidebottom in bowling well for the latter part of the Surrey innings and that Lehmann’s second innings wicket is still intact.From the other side of this great rivalry Surrey may be concerned with the occasional dropped catch and a failure to convert enough fifties into centuries. Both seem rather mild complaint for a side which is seemingly scoring runs and taking wickets at will, and whose two best players (Thorpe and Saqlain) and captain are yet to make an appearance this season.