Surrey fell to a second defeat of the Rothesay County Championship season, falling by seven wickets to Glamorgan in Cardiff
The home side continued their strong season in Division One with a third victory, chasing 195 against an otherwise stubborn Surrey side.
Half-centuries from Colin Ingram and Kiran Carlson led the way with the latter’s fifth innings passing the half-century mark in the County Championship this season. Ryan Hadley earlier removed Jordan Clark in a final game for Glamorgan to end with 4 for 82, breaking the 105-run last-wicket partnership.
After frustrating Glamorgan by batting for the whole of day three in a sun-drenched Cardiff, weary bodies came out with the requirement of breaking down a misrepresented tenth wicket partnership between all-rounders Clark and Tom Lawes.
The partnership resuming at 56 – with a 145-run lead – Lawes came out with pressure on the well-worked Timm van der Gugten and Tom Norton, pulling well infront of square to set the intention of his actions in the morning session, meanwhile showing the effects of 164 overs in the field consecutively.
Lawes scored freely to surpass 50 for a second time in four innings’ this season combining for the century partnership with Clark supporting. The latter, attempting to latch onto tiring bowlers, fell to Hadley’s leg-side trap, top-edging a pull shot 50 minutes into the day.
With 49 added overnight, Surrey had something to bowl at. Despite the pitch’s dryness and improved condition, a comeback effort to 447 from 105 all out in the first innings was creditable, although the first innings exploits would be casing point for where the game was won and lost.
The target of 195 may or may not have been the impact but Glamorgan’s start was shaky. Billy Root, in his first game of the season ran out in catastrophic fashion after just four balls. With both players at the non-strikers end, wicket-keeper Ollie Pope had an unnecessary shy, only for the backing up Dom Sibley to mop up with Root making no attempt to get home.
Two balls later, a calming, positive intent relaxed the hosts as Carlson drove through extra cover for four to get the scoreboard movement underway.
Carlson’s fine Division One form continued to kick the chase on with Tribe enjoying anything on his pads to dismiss until he was caught fending outside off stump off the leg-spinner Rahul Chahar, introduced after just eight overs on the wearing surface.
The damage was done with Chahar conceding 23 in two overs, getting swept – in orthodox and reverse – regularly by Ingram, and pulled into the stands when dropped short albeit bowling Carlson around his legs from around-the-wicket for a consolation.
Sean Dickson came to see home the win in a third half-century stand of the innings with Ingram’s 61 not out a fitting way to wrap up the win over the side Glamorgan last beat in the County Championship 11 years ago when he too remained at the crease to finish the job.
After play, Head Coach Gareth Batty spoke to BBC London’s Mark Church.
“I think in first division cricket a 250 deficit first innings is going to take some dragging back. We made a pretty good fist of it in our second innings and we certainly thought at periods today that we had a real red hot go of forcing something more positive than what we ended up with, but ultimately a 250 deficit kills you.”
“The pitch did play well, but I also don’t think we fully understood what was required to take 10 wickets. I think we probably pushed a little bit too hard in the second session of the day to force that the wickets required instead of just allowing the pitch to play a few tricks for us and be a little bit more patient. But I suppose that’s the nature of the beast when you’re coming from so far behind. It certainly wasn’t a lack of want or desire from the lads, we just didn’t quite get it right.”
“First innings with the ball, we had them 63-6 – and they amassed over 300! So there’s been key moments in pretty much every game this season where we’ve said that surfaces have defeated us, but we’re possibly defeating ourselves at times by not grabbing hold of the key moments in games. Credit to Glamorgan. They were hustling, they were dynamiting the field and they made it very hard for us. They didn’t allow us to play with that panache that at times we have done. And they made us work and probably just didn’t quite get things our own way.”
On the final six games in the Rothesay County Championship, Gareth Batty said: “First and foremost, we’ve got to get back into winning ways and get used to winning again and understanding the ebbs and flows of games and reacting to those and not fighting them. So if we can win key games against teams where we have to, all bets are on.”
