Sam Curran added 77 to a first innings 70, in his first red-ball appearance since last September, as Surrey saw out a rain-hit final day on 289 for seven to secure a draw against Essex at the Kia Oval.
Curran’s 121-ball effort held Surrey’s batting together as seamer Jamie Porter and off-spinner Simon Harmer threatened to bowl Essex to a second Rothesay County Championship win of the season.
Six separate rain interruptions during the day – all of them short, but lopping 20 overs in all from the final day’s allocation – did not help Essex’s cause. In the end, a 51-run stand between Jamie Overton and Jordan Clark proved decisive.
Overton stayed just over two hours for his 47 from 102 balls, edging Porter to third slip just before 6pm from what became the last ball of the game. Clark finished 23 not out.
Porter finished with five for 88 from 27 overs and Harmer two for 94 from 34 with Essex taking 11 points from the draw and Surrey, who stay second in the Division One table, picked up 12.
After the fifth rain delay Essex thought they had 14 overs – including seven with a second new ball – in which to take the last four Surrey wickets, but after eight balls yet another heavy shower ultimately reduced that equation by four more overs.
Surrey had started the day on 32 without loss, having been set an unlikely 418 in the fourth innings after Essex, led by centuries from Paul Walter and 20-year-old Charlie Allison on days two and three, had reached 479 in their own second innings.
Rory Burns and Dom Sibley, Surrey’s openers, were fluent early on against Essex’s seamers and took their stand to 76 before Harmer made the breakthrough with the first ball of his third over of the morning.
Left-hander Burns, on 39, jumped out to drive but was beaten by appreciable spin and bounce out of the bowlers’ footmarks and superbly stumped by Michael Pepper, who had to bring the ball down from almost shoulder height.
Sibley, having reached 40 with some excellent strokes down the ground, was similarly deceived by Harmer. The former South African Test spinner, seeing Sibley advance from his crease, tossed the ball a bit wider to leave the former England man groping for it and Pepper to complete a far simpler stumping.
At lunch, with only one over at that stage lost to a sharp mid-session shower, Surrey had stabilised the innings at 142 for two through Australian left-hander Kurtis Patterson and Curran, who got off the mark in spectacular style by hooking Porter for six over deep square leg.
Another shower delayed the restart by ten minutes and, in the afternoon’s second over Patterson was beaten by a break-back from Porter, operating from around the wicket, and bowled off a thin inside edge for 40.
Curran square cut Porter for four and also punched Harmer through mid on for another boundary but Surrey’s faint hopes of chasing down their distant win target fell away when Porter removed Ben Foakes and Jason Roy in the space of three balls to leave the home side 167 for five.
Nibbling the ball away from the right-handers, at just on and outside off stump, Porter first had Foakes caught behind for seven before Roy was superbly held, low and left-handed, by a diving Harmer at second slip. It completed an unhappy pair for former England one-day opener Roy.
In between further showers, Curran and Overton steadied Surrey once again in a sixth wicket partnership that eventually realised 77 in 24 overs.
Curran, on 76, survived an impassioned appeal for a low legside catch behind the wicket off Porter that may not have carried. But, soon Allison flung himself to his left at point to clutch a Curran square drive and give Essex renewed hope with Surrey now 244 for six.
Only eight more balls were possible, however, before more rain arrived and after another subsequent delay the final mini-session of play saw Essex crowding the bat in vain while Surrey’s seventh wicket pair kept out Porter and Harmer – until Overton fell with the draw assured.
ECB Reporters Network supported by Rothesay
