TREMLETT
AND MEAKER CAP IMPRESSIVE DISPLAY by Marcus Hook
Surrey 620-7d v Northamptonshire 240 & 205. Surrey win by an
innings and 175 runs.
It was fitting, perhaps, that
Surrey's most dominant display in four-day cricket for four years
ended with Mark Ramprakash claiming the winning catch at mid-on. The
victory had been set-up by Ramprakash's innings of 248. It was
rounded off, however, with an awesome display of fast bowling by
Chris Tremlett, who claimed three wickets in the space of nine
deliveries, and Stuart Meaker.
Realistically, Surrey need to win
four of their remaining six championship games to be in with a
chance of promotion, but should their attack continue to benefit
from the level of fielding on show yesterday, then anything is
possible. The one-handed catch Andre Nel took at first slip to
dismiss Alex Wakely was out of the top drawer. David Sales fell
victim to one which was almost as good. Tom Lancefield and Usman
Afzaal also claimed chances that would have routinely gone to
ground.
When Stephen Peters and Ben Howgego
were proving tough nuts to crack, and, in the process, combining for
an opening stand of 96 after being re-inserted, there was no real
hint of the carnage that was to follow Peters's demise in the 35th
over.
In the third over, Peters on drove
Nel for four. In the next, Howgego helped Tremlett to the rope at
third man. After lunch, Peters drove Nel through the covers off the
back foot before working Tremlett to the boundary at backward square
leg.
When spin was introduced, Howgego
sliced Batty through backward point for four. Five overs later, the
22-year-old left-hander cut Afzaal in front of square on the
off-side for another boundary. Peters, who had swept and cover
driven fours off Batty, went to fifty in the 33rd over, when he cut
Nel past the outstretched hand of Matthew Spriegel at backward
point. But, two overs later, the rot began when Peters fended a
rising delivery to gully.
Four wickets fell with
Northamptonshire's total on 96. With the very next delivery,
Tremlett plucked out Howgego's off peg. Three balls later, Sales was
caught low down at first slip to record his third duck in four
innings this season against Surrey. In Tremlett's next over, Rob
White chopped a short delivery on to the base of his leg stump.
Meaker was then introduced from the
Vauxhall End. In the 48th over, Wakely departed to Nel's stupendous
catch, high and to his right. Four overs later, Andrew Hall, squared
up, was caught low down at point off a thick outside edge. In the
56th over, Elton Chigumbura went to a stinging catch at third slip;
though not before he had lifted Meaker over extra cover for six.
Two overs later, Meaker claimed a
fourth scalp when David Murphy was beaten for pace, which prompted
the visitors' tail, led by James Middlebrook, to play some forceful
shots. Middlebrook and David Lucas put on 35 in seven overs for the
ninth wicket before Afzaal ran twenty yards to his left to claim an
astonishing catch at wide mid-off. Three overs later, this time with
the ball, he applied the coup de grace.
Earlier in the day, proceedings were
delayed for twenty minutes by rain. But after resuming on 174-8, the
Northants tail added a further 66 runs to the visitors' first
innings total. Murphy and Lucas eked out another 24 in nine overs
before Jack Brooks rounded things off with an exhilarating 36 from
22 deliveries.
The first boundary of the day arrived
in the fifth over, when Lucas squirted the ball past cover point.
Two deliveries later, Batty was taken for another four when Lucas
drove him to the rope at extra cover. Murphy survived a sharp
chance, low and to the left of Rory Hamilton-Brown at second slip,
off the bowling of Meaker in the 64th over. But, moments later,
Batty had Murphy trapped leg before.
That brought Brooks to the crease.
The 26-year-old proceeded to play with complete abandon, immediately
despatching Batty through the covers for four before depositing him
into the Peter May Enclosure for a maximum. In the next over, Brooks
dabbed Meaker down to the rope at third man. Two overs later, he had
the audacity to cut the 21-year-old fast bowler over cover point for
a six.
Brooks had not finished. He clubbed
another maximum, this time over square leg off Batty, before
sweeping the ball straight to backward square to give the former
England off-spinner his first five-wicket haul in a Surrey shirt.
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