Hamilton-Brown: Our starts must improve

By Mark Baldwin

Rory Hamilton-Brown is urging his Surrey team to learn from their mistakes during the last two County Championship matches, as they prepare to take on Division One pace-setters Warwickshire at the Kia Oval this week.

Surrey's young captain believes that his side could have beaten both Somerset and Worcestershire in the past fortnight if they had not started each game with some sloppy cricket.

Worcestershire were left hanging on for a draw at New Road despite forcing Surrey to follow on and then, in their last match, Somerset ran up 512 for nine declared before Surrey again fought their way back into the match. On the final day, chasing 305 in 85 overs for victory, Surrey reached 96 for 1 before a flurry of wickets forced Hamilton-Brown, with 70 not out, to lead a rearguard action to secure the draw at 239 for seven.

"At the moment we're the best side in the country in the third and fourth innings of matches," said Hamilton-Brown, still only 24 but maturing fast as a captain. "It's just the first and second innings of games that we need to look at very closely. Against Somerset we lost the right to win the game by our bowling performance on the opening day, which was not good enough.

"We let them get away from us, as we had done against Worcestershire, and I thought we did extremely well to score almost 400 ourselves in reply and then Stuart Meaker bowled magnificently to take 8 for 52 and help us to bowl Somerset out for just 180 in their second innings, which gave us an outside chance of winning.

"From now on, we need to get ourselves into our four-day matches much quicker, and much better, than we have been doing. But, overall, I think we are adapting to coming up to the first division. People still seem to think of Surrey as a bunch of young blokes who want to bash it out of the park all the time, but I think we are maturing well as a team. But we have to begin starting games as well as we are ending them."

Seamer Tim Linley, Surrey's leading wicket-taker last season, was however a surprise omission from the Somerset game and will surely come back into consideration for the Warwickshire match.


Date: 22/05/2012 11:10:53 by MBaldwin
In: Today | Surrey |