Strilo's first ball

By Jonathan Winsky
May 31 2014

Jonathan describes how his day and Middlesex's performance unfolded at the Oval last night. Not his fault but this does not make good reading from a cricket perspective, but thanks Jonathan for sharing.

I set off at 2:45pm, as I had an interview at the London School of Commerce in London Bridge, as they are recruiting administrators. They said they had received 245 applications, so it felt like an achievement to get an interview, although I would still have to attend another interview if I was to get a role there. As there wasn't enough time to go home to get changed before heading to the cricket, I decided to kill time by taking a bus ride whereby I made it up as I went along, and I eventually got a 40 then 176 bus to Forest Hill station, from where I took a Southern service to London Bridge and a Northern line service to Oval. 

I was hoping to arrive at The Oval in time for the toss, but eventually arrived just after, and to the news that Surrey had won the toss and elected to bowl, with Toby Roland-Jones replacing Ollie Rayner from the team that faced Hampshire at Merchant Taylors’ School last Sunday. I sat in the alcohol-free section, in the hope that there would be more focus on the cricket compared to some other parts of the ground, and I more or less achieved that. 

After the first over bowled by Robin Peterson resulted in one boundary and five dot balls, Paul Stirling was caught by fellow Irishman Gary Wilson first ball off Jade Dernbach, which was bad news for my Fantasy side, as a player out for 0 results in a 10-point deduction. This brought fellow member of my Fantasy side Adam Rossington to the crease, but he didn’t find batting much easier, and was caught at mid-wicket by Kevin O’Brien off Azhar Mahmood. 

Joe Denly looked good after surviving an early run out appeal in which Dernbach at mid-off threw towards the striker's end, although the 3rd umpire gave not out. His innings included a six off Mahmood, but the ball after he hit a four off Tom Curran resulted in him being caught by Wilson, and this meant we ended the Powerplay on 33-3, which was less than half of the 76-0 which Hampshire were at this stage on Sunday. 

Dawid Malan had hit only one four in the Powerplay, and Neil Dexter took 12 balls before he got off the mark by sweeping O’Brien to the boundary. Little else happened before Dex was bowled by Gareth Batty for 10. Dan Christian didn’t last long, and was dismissed for 2 in the following over lbw to Curran, meaning the son of the former Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire all-rounder Kevin finished with figures of 4-0-15-2. 

With the score 57-5 after 12 overs, I was doubtful we would make a particularly imposing score, as we needed 9.30 an over to reach 130, and it seemed unlikely we would be able to score at such a rate. After AC and John Simpson ran a few singles and there was a wide, Simmo was caught and bowled by O’Brien for 3. 

This bought TRJ to the crease, and although he recently scored 60 v Northants, I felt we were down to the tail and would find it difficult to reach 100. However, TRJ continued where he had left off at Wantage Road, and hit Batty for a straight six and ran a single, before AC got in on the action by hitting a six and a four in the final three balls of the over. TRJ then hit a six and a four off the first two balls off a Dernbach over to make the score 98-6 after 17.2 overs, so at least we will pass 100. 

Unfortunately, there would only be one more boundary for the remainder of the innings, with most of our remaining runs coming in singles. TRJ was out in the final over for a Twenty20 career best 30 off 21, ending a partnership of 46 in six overs. I was wondering if an opening batsman had ever batted through a full-length Twenty20 innings without reaching 50, as that is what happened with AC, as he finished on 48 not out. It looked like he had reached 50 with a six off the final ball, but the ball was judged to have bounced just in front of the rope, and so it was a four. I did not actually find out whether it was a four or a six until I arrived home, as I immediately went to the toilet after the end of the innings, as the intervals are short in this format. 

117-7 didn’t seem like a comfortable score to defend, and although the Powerplay saw Surrey score only 6 more than us in that period, the fact they did so without losing any wickets and were not under much scoreboard pressure meant they seemed to be in control. However, the following over saw the big wicket of Jason Roy, who was caught at fine leg by Ravi Patel off James Harris for 26. Two overs later, Stirlo was introduced into the attack and dismissed Steven Davies for 10. Harris was very close to bowling Hashim Amla, but the ball narrowly missed the stumps. 

Although the boundaries were not really flowing, the rate required was never out of Surrey‘s control. Amla was caught by AC for 39 after Christian introduced himself, bringing in O’Brien, which was not what we needed when the rate required was just 4.74. Two overs later, Christian took another wicket after Wilson appeared to edge the ball into Rosso’s pads, whereupon Rosso removed the ball to claim a catch, and the 3rd umpire confirmed it was out. We made Surrey wait for 2.5 overs for their final 10 runs, with the final run taking five balls before Mahmood hit TRJ for four, so I suppose that will help our net run rate. 

We have now lost all five of our Twenty20 matches, and I don’t what to suggest for our remaining nine matches, as our line-up could barely be any stronger other than by adding Eoin Morgan once he is back from England duty. Roll on the return of the County Championship!