Seven wickets fell to spin on a balanced day two of the Second XI Championship game between Surrey and Sussex at Guildford as Tommy Ealham led the attack with a four-wicket haul.
The visitors batted with resolve to increase their overnight score by 273 runs but a collective bowling effort from Surrey stopped them from taking the game away from the hosts.
After ZB Lion-Cachet and OJ Carter’s solid opening stand was halted by rain yesterday, the Sussex duo began steadily again, adding another 26 runs and taking the score to 123 for no loss, before Surrey found their first breakthrough.
It was Amar Virdi who did the damage, getting the visiting skipper caught at mid-on for a well-made 73. Soon after, Lion-Cachet (56) followed suit, being undone by a hard-length Conor McKerr delivery that sharply nipped back and found the edge, leaving Sussex 143/2.
AD Lenham (55) and DK Ibrahim (16) wrestled back the opportunity from Surrey and dug in to prevent a mini-collapse, adding 47 runs from 93 balls and ticking the scoreboard to 192/2. The hosts, however, had the last word in the morning session as Ealham combined with Josh Blake to pick up two wickets in quick succession, with Sussex heading into the lunch interval on 209/4.
Post-lunch, two sturdy partnerships of 45 and 47 for the fifth and sixth wicket took the visitors to nearly 300. The first was broken by Yousef Majid, pushing Lenham to glance down the leg and into the waiting hands of Stuart van der Merwe, who snapped a smart catch at leg slip.
Matt Dunn provided the second breakthrough of the session with what was the moment of the day. Bowling with the second new ball, the seamer delivered a dream yorker that tailed in late and pitched at the base of the stumps, proving too good for AM Foreman (27). Foreman was the helpless party on this occasion, but in all fairness, not that many other batters would have had an answer to it.
The remaining four wickets came at a cost of 72 runs, thanks mainly to CJ Tear’s innings of 80 whilst batting with the tail. Ealham chipped in with the final two wickets, finishing with figures of 4/45, after McKerr (2/55) and Virdi (2/76) shared the earlier other two scalps.
Surrey’s openers Ben Geddes and Arjun Gill saw out four overs late in the day before bad light stopped play, with the hosts closing on 6/0, trailing by 364 runs.
