Tom Latham scored a debut century as Warwickshire reached 364 for four against Surrey on the opening day of their Rothesay County Championship Division One match at Edgbaston.
New Zealand batter Latham struck an unbeaten 139 (244 balls) after Surrey chose to bowl on flat pitch at Edgbaston. Rob Yates scored 86 (151) against the champions’ much-changed team with Ollie Pope, Jamie Smith and Gus Atkinson having departed on England duty.
Warwickshire, meanwhile, are without young seamer Michael Booth who will be sidelined for two to three months by a stress fracture of the fibula. Barbados-born Che Simmons has come into the team for his home championship debut.
Against a Surrey attack including debutant Nathan Smith. Warwickshire started serenely in the Second City sunshine as Yates and Alex Davies (45, 58) gathered an untroubled 70 in 19 overs. Davies twice hoisted Jordan Clark for six over the short Hollies Stand boundary but departed in angst after swinging and missing at a full toss from Dan Lawrence.
Yates and Latham added 112 before the former departed in a different type of angst to this captain. With a century beckoning, he tickled a leg-side delivery from Tom Lawes to the wicketkeeper.
Latham moved sweetly into the 40s, took a breather and spent 35 balls there, then pulled Clark for six to reach his half-century and galloped from 50 to 80 in another 18 balls.
Surrey’s rejigged bowling attack, with Smith on his debut and Lawes and Cameron Steel each playing their first game of the season, persevered nobly. Sam Hain flicked Clark straight to backward square leg and Lawrence bowled Beau Webster with a beauty through the gate.
But Ed Barnard (38, 63) joined the implacable Latham to add an unbroken 83 in the last 24 overs of the day. Latham reached his 27th first class century from 161 balls to emulate his countryman Jeetan Patel in making a ton on his Warwickshire debut.
It was a gruelling day in the field for Surrey but they will expect similar plunder from their batters, including Jason Roy who will be looking to make it back-to-back championship centuries spanning six years eight months, having scored 128 against Essex at the Kia Oval in his last championship game, in September 2018.
Surrey bowling coach Jade Dernbach said: “First thing this morning the pitch looked like it was going to be a good one, a flat one, but we thought our best chance of progressing the game forward was to have a bowl. We backed ourselves to jump on the front foot and try to force a result on this wicket and felt that was the best way to go about it.
“The pitch has played as we expected it to and we are getting used to this away from home. This seems to be what we are going to face now away from the Kia Oval. But the boys put in a brilliant shift and kept coming back and trying things and you never know, if we come in a bit fresher tomorrow morning and get a couple of early wickets, suddenly the game is wide open again. But it’s going to take something special, I think.
“It’s attritional cricket and trying to stop the boundaries is the important thing and then trying to create opportunities, like he catch at square leg, if you can build enough pressure. That’s going to be the game plan for us tomorrow and then to take our opportunity with the bat when it comes along.”
ECB Reporters Network supported by Rothesay
