Posted by As Somerset showed last week, there are ways to beat Surrey. But if you can’t muster the same quality of spin bowling and you aren’t in charge of the pitch, what are your options? This week at the Oval, Durham tried something different. Durham tried reversing into their second innings, arse-first. It didn’t work, but kudos for innovating.
The situation was this. Having been danworralled out for 262 in their first innings, Durham then conceded 415. You don’t win many games from there, but Durham had a plan.
We love nightwatchers. We love the fundamental concept that when conditions are tough, you send in an inferior batter to deal with them to ‘protect’ a better one. We love it when this tactic works, we love it when it absolutely does not work and we particularly love it when it results in a tail-ender opening the batting – which is what happened at the end of day two.
With just a couple of overs remaining in the day, Durham sent out Callum Parkinson – who had batted at eight in the first innings – to face the first ball. Callum Parkinson did not survive that first ball.
This was not entirely surprising. Dan Worrall tends to make light work of specialist opening batters. Confronted with a tail-ender and armed with a new ball, the odds were in his favour.
How did Durham respond? Seeing that their number eight batter had failed to survive a single delivery, there was only one obvious course of action: they sent in an even worse batter.
Dan Hogg had batted at nine in the first innings, making all six of his career first-class runs, his only other two outings with the bat having both resulted in ducks. Entrusted with the pivotal number three spot, he made another duck. (Disappointingly, he took 10 balls over it, rather than doubling down on the comedy by copying Parkinson’s first-baller, which meant he lasted until the following morning.)
At this point the score read 2-2 and when opening batter Ben McKinney – who was now batting at four – became the third batter dismissed by Worrall for a duck, it was 2-3. Alex Lees then got out to someone else (Jordan Clark) for not a duck (4) and it was 18-4.
Could Durham win from there?
They could not. Surrey won the match by 10 wickets and probably also the Championship (that’s not technically confirmed at the time of writing, but should be any minute).
At the other end of the table, Kent have been relegated.
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