It is a little known fact that Nottinghamshire were the last team to beat Surrey home and away in the same championship season. Since then, however, the Oval outfit have gone undefeated against Friday's opponents, winning six out of seven - most of them by a healthy margin. The last time these two sides met was when Surrey clinched the County Championship in 1999, so a number of Adam Hollioake's men will go into this encounter with happy memories. Whether Mark Butcher, who made 81 not out on that tumultuous day four years ago, plays seems to depend on whether Alec Stewart starts. In the middle order Alistair Brown and Graham Thorpe appear to be fighting over the same place. Strangely enough they are the only two batsmen with championship centuries for Surrey against Notts. The selection issues on the bowling front appear to be two-fold. Ian Salisbury will be hard to accommodate unless the pitch looks like it could turn (or if Alex Tudor is still struggling with his fitness); plus if Rikki Clarke is going to get the nod, which seems unlikely, it will almost will probably be at the expense of Azhar Mahmood. For the home side Jason Gallian is averaging just 3.66 after two championship outings, but is expected to start. Usman Afzaal and Kevin Pietersen are also far from peaking with the bat. That said, Darren Bicknell, Chris Read and Bilal Shafayat have all played encouragingly so far. The attack is led by 25-year-old Charlie Shreck (six wickets at an average of 18.16) and left-armer Greg Smith (eleven @ 19.18), but the less said about the spin threat the better - basically, there isn't one without Stuart MacGill.
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