Surrey fell to a seven-wicket defeat at the hands of Northamptonshire in their Second XI Championship contest in Dunstable.
The morning of the third day began with left-arm seamer Seb Stuart Reckling striking on the fifth ball of the first over, trapping C Haddow LBW for 29 and rounding up Northamptonshire’s innings for 317. Yesterday, in an astonishing effort, skipper Yousef Majid had picked up the bulk of the Northants wickets, finishing with incredible figures of 8/97.
Walking out with a lead of 14 runs, Surrey openers Adam Thomas and Josh Blake added 27 runs before the latter was caught in the slips off the bowling of D Leech for 15.
Oscar Pascall then joined up with Thomas, and the pair batted well together to extend Surrey’s lead to 87 before G Scrimshaw found the all important wicket of Thomas, who was caught behind for 26.
From here on, what was a finely-poised game quickly tilted in favour of the hosts as Northants induced a Surrey collapse. Pascall (29), Nathan Farmer (1), Majid (0), and Nathan Barnwell (0) fell within a span of 10 runs, leaving the visitors 85 for six.
Surrey were only able to add another 37 runs before losing their remaining four wickets – James Taylor (7), Daz Ahmed (20), Stuart-Reckling (0), and Luke Griffiths (9) – with Scrimshaw (5/16) and Haddow (3/38) leading the charge for Northants.
Defending a target of 137, Surrey found an early breakthrough when Stuart-Reckling had AH Miller caught by Arafat Bhuiyan for 12.
Former Surrey Second XI player Stuart van der Merwe (33) and Aadi Sharma handled the new ball and compiled 64 runs for the second wicket before Majid collected his ninth wicket of the match as van der Merwe holed out to midwicket.
Surrey picked up their third wicket in a bizarre manner when Barnwell’s quick and well-directed bouncer found a feather of Sharma’s bat and ricocheted off his helmet back into the hands of the Surrey pacer.
It was smooth sailing for the hosts beyond that, with wicketkeeper N Halstead-Cleak (24*) and K Patel (34*) taking their side to a seven-wicket victory.
