Does Mickey Arthur still have the duel role with Derbyshire and Pakistan?

Roach and Worrall are absolutely lethal arent they?

I can't forget them dismissals.

And to echo what's being said about today, why have we won the toss and elected to bowl on one of the biggest bat first grounds in the world?! I remember 2017 when Belly won the toss at the Oval and did the same, think Surrey went in something like 290-2 after day 1! Why are we like this?!

No issue with him in white ball cricket, he consistently gets wickets and I don't think he goes around the park anywhere near as often as is made out, he was our most economical bowler in the Blast 1/4 final for one example. And I thought he had a decent one day cup, 8 wickets in 28 overs in total, you take that.

In red ball though he simply has to cut out these short wide deliveries, just can't set fields for him when he's like this. He sometimes bowls 3 four balls an over.

I think it is in there though, easy to forget he's only just turned 24, 23/24 year old OHD wasn't pulling up many trees, and he has had some bad injuries.

He's got it all to do.

Surrey

Sibley
Burns
Patel
Smith
Foakes
Steel
Clark
Overton
Lawes
Roach
Worrall

Won the toss elected to bowl...

Brathwaite
Rhodes
Benjamin
Hain
Mousley
Barnard
Burgess
Briggs
Brookes
Rushworth
OHD

No Davies or Yates (ill) tomorrow.

Bethell and Norwell out for the season.

Benjamin in line to play.

Rushworth back. Braithwaite available.

Has signed

Can't recall any 1 year extensions this year but to echo what has been said previously we have indeed got quite a few senior players out of contract end of 2024.

And we're never very good with contracts, every 2 or 3 seasons we seem to have good players going into the remaining 12 months of their deal whilst we give out long term security to fringe players. Craig Miles signed a 3 year deal back in October, nice lad and all, willing trier, but he did well to get that.

Cox is a good get for Leicestershire. I wouldn't have had him over Burgess though and we have decent keepers coming through the academy.

Michael Burgess has signed on for next season.

Agreed.

Yeah Roach is back. Sudharsen is a strange signing, only played 8 first class matches in his career thus far, no international cricket.

Glad you acknowledge that we have indeed recruited heavily already.

People seem to think county cricket is like football in that you can just go out and sign 4 or 5 players and sort the team out, Cricket just doesn't work like that, Ashley Giles said this on numerous occasions in interviews across 2017 and 2018. The most successful county sides all have a strong nucleus of homegrown players (Essex, Somerset) and an excellent pipeline of talent from their academy and pathway. Surrey recruit well but they also consistently show a pathway to the first XI for homegrown talent and have had some excellent academy products in their 4day side.

It's far too simplistic to say recruitment is the be all and end all in cricket.

Warwickshire have been very active in recruiting from other counties for a good few years now and yet supporters seem to think the answer to us not winning knockout games is to recruit even more/harder. Take the 3 quarter final losses in a row in the Blast, the playing XI in each one of those games were all quite different each time, it's not like the same players have all failed every year. Compare the XI that lost away at Kent in 2021 with the XI that lost at home to Essex in 2023...two very different Bears teams. Maybe we have too big a turnover in players every other season due to recruitment?

One thing I will assert about our recruitment is that we have to do better at overseas players. However Directors of Cricket have my sympathy though as with the rise of franchise tournaments and a bloated international cricket calender its becoming harder to get a quality player to be available for county cricket for long periods. Look at next season with the T20 Blast, it will coincide with the T20 World Cup, all the best players will be tied up in that you'd think. It gets harder and harder to sign quality overseas players and when you do get a good one, like Maxwell, there is no guarantee they will perform.

I've seen people on here say things like '...we need a quality overseas middle order batter who can also captain in 4day cricket...'

Well yeah, every county wants that, but good luck finding one.

The Davies news caught my eye. Does this mean Hamza Shaikh will debut? Does Rhodes open? Does Barnard?!

That Dawson interview is a good one. He's bowling has improved a lot this season, he's a very canny operator who knows his game inside and out.

Farbrace made an approach for him in 2019 but he chose to stay put which is entirely fair.

GerryShedd wrote:

Before we sack the coach and half the playing squad, perhaps we should step back and realise that, so far this season, we have, in all competitions, won 22 games and lost just nine. We are fourth in Division One of the Championship and topped our groups in both the Blast and the One Day Cup.
That doesn't mean it's ok to lose at the quarter and semi-final stages but it does mean that the season has been far from a disaster.

Exactly this. We've improved loads and we're far more competitive than 2022. Some major overreacting going on in here. I'm not keen on Robinson either, I too have heard things, but he ain't in sack territory going off this season thus far.

Tail end runs have been a problem for us all season. In the County Championship even though we're better than last season we're still a little bit '6 down and all out quickly'.

Surrey's top order have been no better than ours this season, not much better anyway. However they can be 110-4 then 285-8 then 340 a/o. They do all the time whether it be Abbott, Joverton, Worrall or Lawes etc. We could never...

We do lack tail order runs. Remember 2011/12 when we might have Clarke, Woakes, Maddy, Barker and Jeets at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!

I always think with Bethell it's a case of one step forward one step back. He'll play a nice little innings illuminated with terrific strokes underlining his huge ability (like v Derbyshire) and you think he's cracked it then in the following games he'll be presented with a situation where he can really take charge and get a big score in a pressure situation (like v Sussex or today) and he ends up not doing it.

But he is very young and he won't get better at this by playing in the 2's or by not playing at all so you look for the year on year improvement. He's a better player than last season but right now he's very loose.

Tayls79 wrote:

Genuine question, I haven't seen any of today. But was this one of those quasi-autumnal games where the toss loser gets put in and they got shot out, chasing team win at a canter? I see Dawson got a load of wickets, but had the seamers put us on the backfoot already and he cleared up?

"Clutch" games are definitely a key issue. As well as the knock out white ball games we lost crucial CC games too where a win or a good draw would have seen us in a stronger position. I'm not sure it's totally a coaching issue, there's limited impact when the players are on the field. Without knowing if this was an autumn result we don't know for sure its a choke or not. Not sure if they're getting better at it or not.

While we're on Robinson, I can remember rumours saying he ruffled a few feathers with England women. But England women were much stronger at the end of his reign. This will be his third season completed so he can't blame predecessors. If we get, say, third in the CC, fourth in the one day then 8th in the Blast, is that removal territory?

Huge toss to win for Hampshire. Was very dull and dank at 11am with the ball swinging and nipping about off the pitch. Some of the dismissals look terrible in isolation and there was a fair amount beating the bat with some playing and missing and the odd delivery popping off a length from the Pavilion End. Tough pitch. Dawson was getting a decent amount of turn. Even Hain looked a bit iffy and a bit streaky at times. There was some dubious umpiring too but we did play some poor cricket no doubt, you simply cannot get run through for 93.

I still think we're having a decent season in comparison to last season.