Surrey Promotion

I may be a Gloucestershire fan but I would like to offer my congratulations to Surrey on their promotion. In terms of the future of English cricket Surrey being promoted will offer much better long term prospects than either Gloucestershire or Northants. There are a number of young English prospects in the Surrey team who may well go onto international honours and the higher standard of cricket in the first division should benefit their development and give a better indicator to the selectors of the quality of the players.

Surrey’s bowling attack is one of the strongest in the country and with the addition of Pragyan Ohja for the last month or so of the season there is a great deal of variation in the attack. Tim Linley has developed into a fine opening bowler who is a very good exponent of the swinging ball; it will be interesting how he goes in the first division without the use of the Tiflex ball. Chris Jordan and Stuart Meaker both offer express pace and Meaker in particular is a real wicket taker who could go onto higher honours. He has added consistency to his pace and has benefited from being injury free throughout the season – bowlers who bowl 90mph+ are always at a premium and England may well add Meaker to their stable of fast bowlers in the future. Batty and Ohja spin the ball opposite ways, and Zander De Bruyn is a good option when the ball is swinging. I haven’t even mentioned Jade Dernbach and Chris Tremlett – Surrey’s attack when at full strength is probably as close to test class as anyone’s in county cricket- and then there is the addition of Gloucestershire stalwart Jon Lewis which should add depth to an attack which may be affected by international call ups and injuries more than they have this season.

The Surrey batting is more volatile and is viable to do anything(probably with the exception of scoring 600-4 in 200 overs) and will be their weak link next season if Mark Ramprakash doesn’t contribute more than he has done this season(if he even makes next season). Rory Hamilton-Brown, Jason Roy, Tom Maynard are all exciting prospects with Roy probably the most exciting of the bunch and Steven Davies is still young and scoring plenty of runs but what a signing Zander de Bruyn has proved. It’s conceivable if Somerset had retained his services that they would have won the county championship and almost certain that Surrey would not have been promoted. The young batsmen can be impetuous and at times immature in their approach to batting but you can’t fault their ability or mentality. 

Whatever happens to Surrey next season you can be sure it will be exciting, and let’s hope their England prospects benefit from the step up in standard, the batsman mature and the bowlers continue to prosper. The first season will be the toughest and if they do manage to stay up next year expect the young team to go from strength to strength. The combination of the promising young players, older senior players, and the financial clout that they posses means they should continue to improve and I wouldn’t be surprised if they become the dominant side in English cricket in a few years time.

Inane Ramblings

The problem with being close but not close enough

Steven Finn has been picked in the England ODI and T20’s squads for the forthcoming games against India as he was earlier in the season against Sri Lanka, he has also been a regular in the test squad this summer. Apart from one Test against Sri Lanka when Tremlett and Bresnan were unfit and the Ireland ODI he has yet to be selected. It’s often the problem with being close to the team and yet not a starter that a season can become disrupted, it would be fair to say his season has being disrupted considerably. Whenever Finn has been selected for Middlesex he has performed particularly well and by accounts has improved considerably since last winter’s ashes. I don’t have any problem with England not selecting him if they think there are better players but I do disagree with selecting him in an ODI squad if it is simply as a backup to the other players and they’re not expecting him to be a frontline player. The current ODI squad has Anderson, Bresnan, Broad, Dernbach and Swann in it and all are likely to start the games so why bother selecting Finn when he has no chance of playing under normal circumstances – surely he would be better off playing a county match and being called up if there was an injury. Personally I would propose a rotation policy on the squad – Anderson, Bresnan, Broad and Swann have all had a busy summer, so why not rest a couple of them for a couple of games. It would be better off for all concerned if there was a working squad of 12 and split the ODI series in two. 

Give Buttler the go in the last 10

Samit Patel and Ravi Bopara both struggled the other day in the t20 International against India coming in at 5 and 6 and needing to accelerate straight away. Neither bat there for their county and as such I have a degree of sympathy with their situation. This is why it would have been nice to see Jos Buttler come in at one of these positions as he is a clean hitter used to coming in towards the end of the innings at Somerset. England seems to resist any temptation to change from their initial plan which I think is a fault of the current ODI team.

Breslad not an opener

Tim Bresnan has been opening the bowling in the T20 and ODI's of recent times and I don't like it. By definition the opening bowler should be a wickettaker yet Bresnan has the worst of all the England bowlers strike rates and a distinctly poor average to go with it. I can see why he gets selected as he is a combative player and is a decent no.8 but don't give him the new ball. In fact in games where Broad and Swann are playing I wouldn't select Bresnan.

ICC Test XI

The ICC recently came out with their Test Xi for the last year and generally it wasn’t the worst selection I have seen from the ICC, although I did have a couple of question marks about it. Somehow they managed to select Kumar Sangakkara as the Wicketkeeper which seemed a bit strange given the fact he didn’t even keep during the period. What’s even stranger was the performance of Matt Prior who comfortably outshone any other keeper during the period. In a direct comparison to Sangakkara we can see quite how far he was ahead.

Matt Prior 741 @ 57 48c1s; 7 wins, 3 draws, 2 defeats
Kumar Sangakkara 412 @ 45.77 0c0s; 5 draws, 1 defeat

But hey ho those ICC chiefs know best. It was probably unfair on Ian Bell also given the year he had but in fairness if you had to select two English batsmen they got the right two in Jonathan Trott and Alastair Cook. Stuart Broad was the one English selection I thought was questionable given he missed most of the ashes and performed poorly with the ball with the exception of the last Indian series.

Useless stuff

Rikki Clarke has more catches in CC1 this season than teammate and wicketkeeper Tim Ambrose 35-32, both in 13 matches. Clarke also has 41 wickets, Ambrose has 0 obviously.

Jonathan Trott is still yet to hit a six in either test or one day international cricket. He does though have 3 in T20 cricket. Is this current series a chance to put the record straight?

Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow both have one game to get to the magical 1000 runs in county cricket this season. Root, 874 runs and Bairstow, 946 runs, are potential England players of the future but both could be plying their trade in division two next year as Yorkshire fail to live upto last seasons performances.

England have won 10 out of their last 12 one day series