By Mark Baldwin
Result: Surrey 359 beat Hampshire 151 & 197 by an innings and eleven runs
CHAMPIONS Surrey needed only 30.2 overs on the final morning on Monday to wrap up victory by an innings and eleven runs against an overwhelmed Hampshire at the Kia Oval.
Dan Worrall finished with an impressive 5-47 as Hampshire, dismissed first time around for 151 on day one, were bowled out again for 197.
Ollie Pope equalled the Surrey record for the most outfield catches in a first-class match, pouching three more at second slip to give himself six in the innings and eight in the game.
Surrey’s thumping win, their second of the new Division One season, would surely have been completed well inside three days had a total of 84 overs not been lost to bad weather on the second and third days.
Hampshire, resuming their second innings still 92 runs behind at 116-5, had added just Ben Brown’s single to their overnight score when Liam Dawson fell for eighteen – edging Worrall to Pope in the cordon in the third over of the morning.
It was Pope’s fourth catch of the innings in the position, and sixth of the match, and the England batsman then went to seven when Worrall returned for his second spell of the morning session and Pope accepted a straightforward nick to second slip as Kyle Abbott departed for eight to the fast bowler’s second ball back.
Pope’s eighth and final catch of the match equalled Tony Lock’s record for Surrey from 1957 against Warwickshire at the Oval, although five of Lock’s catches in that game were off his own bowling. It also wrapped up the contest and gave Worrall his fifth wicket of the innings, Brad Wheal (9) obligingly edging for Pope to complete a spectacular tumbling take to his right.
James Fuller had earlier hung around 23 balls for his four, before fending a Gus Atkinson lifter to gully where Dan Lawrence took the catch at the second attempt to leave Hampshire 139-7.
Atkinson then greeted Abbott with a vicious first-ball lifter that the tailender did well to fend away from in front of his face, with both feet off the ground, and Abbott continued to bat bravely as he helped Brown to add 26 for the eighth wicket.
But Worrall’s return did for him and leg-spinner Cameron Steel, brought on for his first bowl of the match for the 71st over of Hampshire’s second innings, had Brown well-held on the deep mid wicket ropes by Ryan Patel one ball after being slog-swept for six in his third over.
Brown’s 45 was a creditable effort but it was also a mark of Surrey’s dominance, and bowling power, that Steel – the early season’s leading championship wicket-taker with 20 from the first three rounds – had not been needed until the game was all but over.
Surrey, who also beat Kent at Canterbury last week, took 22 points to Hampshire’s three and have begun the campaign strongly in their bid for three successive championship titles.
“We have played really well over the four days,” Surrey captain Rory Burns said. “Obviously we got an early foothold in the game by bowling them out for 151 on the first day and getting ourselves into a good position from there.
“It was important for us when Ryan Patel came in to join me in our first innings and played really well [to score 41]. He has opened the batting for us a lot in the past and so was very good against the moving ball. The partnership we were able to put on together was a big moment in the game.
“I was very pleased to contribute my own hundred to the team cause in our first innings and, yes, I think it was one of my best innings for the club. And then Jordan Clark came in and hit a brilliant hundred late on in our innings which gave us what was a match-winning lead.
“But I think the way our bowling attack has performed in this game, and especially in the second innings because of the relentless nature of it, is very much a blueprint for us as we go further into the season. It is very pleasing that we have started the season so well.”
Burns added: “Ollie has always been a very good catcher of the ball, and he moves very well on his feet so he is able to take a lot of difficult chances because of the good positions he gets himself in.”
