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Surrey’s result at Hove leaves them with three draws from three matches as the meeting with Sussex limped to a sorry end - Mike Hewitt/Getty Images
Surrey’s meeting with Sussex limped to a sorry end on Monday afternoon. With the floodlights on, few still in the ground and no prospect of a result, captain Rory Burns bowled his medium-pacers, before Dan Worrall and Dom Sibley had a go at leg spin. The players left the field at 3.25pm and did not return.
Burns and his team are seeking to become the first to win four County Championship titles in a row since the 1950s, when their Surrey predecessors won seven on the spin. The result at Hove leaves them with three draws from three matches, which neither represents a disastrous start nor a good one.
Results elsewhere were kind to Surrey this weekend, with only Essex (against Worcestershire) winning in Division One. Because Nottinghamshire were denied by the weather at Edgbaston and Somerset stalled Hampshire, no team has won more than one game in the top flight this season. Surrey sit seventh, but draws are not to be sniffed at, now they are – ludicrously – worth eight points. They are only 11 points behind the leaders.
There has, though, been enough in these three games to worry Surrey supporters that their great run could be coming to an end. They are struggling to take 20 wickets. At this time of year, time lost to the weather is inevitable (especially with overeager umpires), making forcing results harder. But more than that, when they play away from the Kia Oval, opponents now know what conditions to roll out: in early season, slow and very flat. Later in the summer, spin.
“It’s what we expected,” said Gareth Batty, Surrey’s head coach, of flat surfaces like the one at Hove. “People started doing it to us at the end of last year. Very flat, docile, placid surfaces. We are a couple of bits of ammunition short because of injury in terms of what would help that process to take 20 wickets. But that is no excuse. We have had our opportunity. We need to play the perfect game to get that result, and we haven’t quite done that. The weather has also taken passages of play out that would have helped.”
Surrey were close to the complete county team across their three title wins: a deep batting order filled with England internationals, and a relentless seam attack that just kept coming at you. There has always been a sprinkling of overseas stardust, and each season they have added another class act from a rival: Sibley, Dan Lawrence, Matthew Fisher.
Almost every base has been covered, but if there has been one weakness, it has been the absence of specialist, high-class spin. As a player and captain, Batty was a huge proponent of providing opportunities to English spinners. As coach, he has been more pragmatic, seeking to turn hard-hitting batsmen into spinning all-rounders: Will Jacks, Cameron Steel and Lawrence. Specialist spinners Dan Moriarty and Amar Virdi have left in the last two seasons.
This has largely worked well, and meant Surrey never sacrifice batting depth. But they lost two matches last season, away at Hampshire and Somerset, on pitches that saw them out-bowled by local spinners such as Liam Dawson and Jack Leach. Spotting what would happen at Taunton, Surrey even parachuted in Shakib Al Hasan, but it was not enough in a classic match.
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Dan Lawrence has bowled more overs than any other Surrey bowler this season - Mike Hewitt/Getty Images
There was the blueprint of how to take on Surrey, and others will follow in the remaining five away matches this season. It is a crying shame that, because of the Championship’s ridiculous, inelegant structure that does not see every team play every other team in Division One (a consequence of 10 teams playing 14 matches), Surrey do not have to travel to Taunton this summer.
Lawrence has bowled more overs (95.4) than any other Surrey bowler this season, but his six wickets betray the fact that he is not yet threatening when conditions do not suit, and is not yet an all-rounder. Batty was keen to point out that Steel would have played if he was not recovering from an ankle injury. “The fact we had a leg-spinner was a point of difference last year,” he said. “We haven’t been able to replace that.”
In Fisher, they made one excellent signing this winter, but turned down the chance to fix their most glaring issue, spin. Perhaps they will look to bring in another midsummer from overseas, or enter the market this winter. England’s Shoaib Bashir is out of contract at Somerset, but a three-match loan at Glamorgan, which ended with a defeat at Lord’s on Monday and saw him take two wickets at 152, did not push his county credentials.
Surrey’s first priority is just playing better. Their seam attack has not been at its best, while there have been minor batting lapses. “[On these pitches] we have to play perfect cricket and we haven’t done that,” said Batty. With results hard to come by on the road, the temptation could be to make pitches more juicy at home, but that could backfire with low scores of their own.
The champions have time on their side, but a problem to solve.
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