IPL In Full Swing

March 21, 2010 by Nick Sadleir
Filed under News

Best of SPIN: Behind the Scenes with Surrey

March 15, 2010 by Duncan Steer
Filed under Featured Content, Features, SPIN Gold

First published in the August 2008 issue of SPIN

Since Surrey last won a trophy in 2003, 12 other counties have won domestic silverware. While Surrey were getting relegated and promoted, Sussex were dominating the county championship. But that hasn’t stopped Surrey being English cricket’s biggest club. They sell more tickets, have more supporters, make more money and have bigger plans than anyone. They pay their players more, too, with a reported average salary of £60,000.

The current team has a lot to live up to. In the 1950s, Surrey won the county championship seven years in a row. More recently, they dominated English cricket in the late ’80s and early ’90s, taking three championship titles in four years, and, in Alec Stewart, Mark Butcher and Graham Thorpe, provided the backbone of the England batting. When Twenty20 started in 2003, Surrey, led by Adam Hollioake, stormed the first competition.

Off the field, the club has big ambitions too: they redeveloped the Vauxhall End of the ground with the £25 million new OCS Stand in time for the 2005 Ashes clincher. As the summer of 2008 started, the club was locked in a battle of wits with planning authorities to get permission to extend the ground’s capacity further, to 25,000 – and build a hotel, just behind the pavilion.

As the gaffer of a club whose ambition already resembles that of an IPL franchise rather than one of the smaller counties, Surrey chief executive Paul Sheldon was keen to make his voice heard as the ECB threw the whole future of the English game into the melting pot. He’d even been quoted as saying that a Twenty20 franchise system might be a worth looking at; a system where the Brit Oval was no longer the home to Surrey but to Vodafone London, or near offer.

In a way, Surrey are the least typical of the counties. Then again, in June 2008, they face exactly the same issues as everyone else: they need to know how they will fit into the post-IPL world; they need to get bums on seats and keep them coming back; and they need to get their team in shape quick-smart if they want a share of that £2.5m Champions League pot.

Two Surrey players – Mark Ramprakash and Ali Brown – turned down offers from the IPL earlier this summer, but the feeling is that next year more players will be invited to dip their toe into the Indian money pool. Which makes the Twenty20 Cup just like one big Pop Idol. Western Australia’s Shaun Marsh, uncapped, became an IPL star for the King’s XI Punjab. Why not Surrey’s James Benning? The bookies have him as favourite to hit the fastest fifty in the tournament. “If the IPL came up, I would go there in a heartbeat,” he tells SPIN, grinning after a net session, two days before the tournament kicks off. “By the looks of things it’s become a bit more available with the scheduling. It seems to have changed a lot of guys’ lives even in a short space of time.”

But not everyone’s got an eye on India. Take Usman Afzaal: not only has he hit three championship tons since his move from Nottingham in the winter; not only is he turning himself into an all-rounder by working on his spin bowling;
but he’s also dating a Bollywood actress and is some kind of face on the sub-continent.

Yet Afzaal is keener to talk up his England chances than his IPL or Champions League chances. “I don’t know whether I’m dumb,” he says. “I don’t even know what’s happening with the Champions League and all that – I just go and play my cricket. I know the boys here just concentrate on doing well for Surrey.”

In truth, no-one knows exactly what the Champions League means for the counties. Since 15 of them – including Surrey – feature ‘rebel’ ICL players, they face being banned from it even if they do qualify by reaching the final of the Twenty20 Cup. But with Stanford and the IPL around too, what’s clear as a general concept is that the teams and individuals who do well in the Twenty20 Cup could make some serious money as a result.

Because of the prize available, Twenty20 is all about winning, says coach Alan Butcher. It’s not a place to bring on youngsters. The No 1 aim – the only aim – is to win the trophy and keep moving towards that possible £2.5m. Hence Chris Lewis.

“In the normal domestic competition, I’d prefer to promote some of our younger players,” says Butcher. “I keep hearing that sides who sign Kolpak players are helping to develop their young players – but it’s difficult to see how a young player in the second team 150 miles away from where the Kolpak player is will be helped greatly by that. But Twenty20 is slightly different.”

The ex-Surrey and England all-rounder Lewis, who is 40, had not played a professional game for eight years before Butcher signed him specifically for T20 at the start of the season. A maverick signing, no?

“Well, yes it is,” laughs Butcher at the first T20 practice session. “But it’s a maverick competition, isn’t it? We’d lost a couple of all-rounders that we hadn’t been able to replace for one reason or another. I’ve already counted the cost of Azhar Mahmood leaving because he’s twice been man of the match for Kent when they’ve beaten us… So it was a question of trying to find the right type of cricketer to play Twenty20. We know its a gamble, but he’s really up for it; he bowled very well this morning.”

In 2003, Surrey won the first-ever Twenty20 Cup, but it’s been reverse-gear all the way since. Last year, they failed to make it out of the group. “The thing we’ve fallen down on in one-day cricket over the last two or three years is getting into a good position where we can qualify for quarter-finals,” says Butcher. “It does appear to be about pressure situations. We haven’t come to terms with how to finish games off.

“Over the time I’ve been in the game, there’s been lots of sides on the edge of winning things and then, when they break through, they just keep on winning. You almost have to learn how to do it. In the ’70s, Essex were always there or thereabouts, then when they finally won something, it happened again and again. Then mid-’90s Warwickshire and late-’90s Surrey and, more recently, Sussex. Obviously, this side gets compared with that ’90s side a lot but people forget that side was together a long time before everything gelled into a trophy-winning side. It didn’t happen overnight.”

The big frustration for Butcher must be that, in fact, the core of that last generation of Surrey champions is still around: five of the current squad were in the team that won the first T20 Cup, in 2003; two more played in the final in 2004. From Mark Ramprakash and Ali Brown at the top to Jimmy Ormond and Saqlain Mushtaq and wicket-keeper Jonathan Batty, the side certainly doesn’t lack experience. But how exactly does a core of high-profile, proven winners build a new XI around themselves?

People say Surrey are the Manchester United of cricket but for coach Alan Butcher, the template would seem to be less Sir Alex Ferguson and more Harry Redknapp. His new signings for 2008 have included Saqlain Mushtaq (31), Chris Lewis (40) and Usman Afzaal (30), which makes Surrey one of the oldest sides around, certainly in Twenty20.

“Well, it depends on what XI we put out,” says Butcher. “But we can have a side that’s a little bit older than you might like – although some of the older players are not bad fielders by any means. But there is definitely a need to get some younger players in, and we have done that: Chris Jordan has come in. Matt Spriegel. Jade Dernbach has just got a career-best six-for and has bowled well all season. So there are people who are starting to force their way in to the side.”

Butcher is Surrey through and through. He first came to the Oval for a trial in April 1970 and has spent the bulk of the last four decades here. He took over the first team in 2006, after eight years as second-team coach. He calls his son, Mark, ‘The captain’ when he talks about him. He says they talk about tactics and selection but, ultimately, it’s Mark who has the final say. Butcher jnr is the one who, usually, has to take the side on the pitch, although a knee injury makes him a doubt for the T20. The first ten spots of any Surrey side are easily picked, says Butcher snr. Any debate is usually over the 11th.

Among those competing for the last place in the T20 side is Stuart Meaker. The fastest bowler in England, measured at 96mph at the ECB Academy, has yet to bowl in a competitive game for Surrey. Butcher tells SPIN that Meaker is unlikely to play in the tournament. “He’s played very little one-day cricket,” he says. “We had him in the XI for the last Friends Provident game – a dead game – and we thought we’d have a look at him but it was washed out and he didn’t get a chance to bowl.

“My opinion is that he’s perhaps had a bit too much coverage coming back from the England set-up. We’re trying to play it all down and help him progress at his natural pace. But he has potential, there’s no doubt about that.”

Surrey have a roster of 18 and
19-year-olds on the fringe of the team but only one who is certain to be in the starting XI: Chris Jordan.
“I haven’t played Twenty20 for Surrey, but I’ve played it for my school,” says the 19-year-old fast-bowling all-rounder, who learned his cricket in Barbados before coming to Dulwich College as a 17-year-old.

“I find it exciting to be playing with lots of experienced players. I like to come and know that as a youngster, I’m playing with past Test players such as Ramprakash, Butcher – even Usman Afzaal has played Test cricket. I’m just honoured to play with players like them, being the youngest player. I pick their brains.”

The team have three practice sessions in the week between their final championship game and the start of the T20. They start with an open-wicket session on the Friday: the top of the nets are open so players can hit the ball out of the ground. The bowlers practice yorkers and slower balls. In the indoor school, there are three bowling machines: as each ball is fired, the batsman is told which part of the ground he must hit it to. “It’s about thinking quickly and getting your feet in the right position,” says Butcher snr.

On Saturday, they’ll come back and concentrate on fielding, with a final session on Monday ahead of the game on Wednesday.

Playing like millionaires

11.06.08 Essex, Brit Oval

For all the preamble and talk of tactics and nuance, when it comes to it, Twenty20 games can be over in a blink. Surrey’s collapse to 10/3 takes ten minutes; Chris Lewis’s first innings back takes six minutes; Essex, fired by five sixes from captain Mark Pettini, take just an hour to chase down Surrey’s meagre 126.

Little goes right for the home side. Batters play head-in-the-air do-or-die shots early in their innings; and while Surrey omit Saqlain Mushtaq, Danish Kaneria (3/22) is the pick of the visitors’ bowlers. Essex skipper Mark Pettini sends Lewis’s first ball out of the ground. The 40-year-old goes for 29 off his two overs.

There are just three high points: 1) Afzaal’s hitting that threatens to put them back into the game after a dreadful start; 2) a brilliant direct hit from Jordan from the boundary and, just possibly, 3) part-time spinner Matt Spriegel sending down three tidy overs for nine runs when the game is all but over.

Or maybe four: tonight’s crowd is over 17,000. Which, for the first of five home games in little over a fortnight, suggests that the public appetite for T20 remains undimmed.

Afterwards, the players have a long chat in the dressing room. Alan Butcher and stand-in skip Mark Ramprakash talk first before others pitch in. The team is disappointed – they feel they prepared well and the performance let them down – but it’s talking not shouting. “Standing up and shouting and screaming doesn’t get you anywhere,” says Alan Butcher later. “It’s all about talking it through.”

Discussions concluded, Spriegel gets the tube to King’s Cross and catches the train to Loughborough. He is midway through his final exams and is commuting between Loughborough and Kennington. He has an exam at nine tomorrow morning, after which he will travel straight back down to prepare for Friday’s game with Kent.

“it doesn’t concern me.
it excites me.”

13.06.08 Kent, Brit Oval

The day after the Essex game Surrey unveil Abdul Razzaq as their new overseas signing. He flies in to Heathrow in the afternoon and Alan Butcher picks him up at the airport. Now banned from playing for Pakistan, Razzaq is a gun for hire. He opened both the batting and bowling for ICL champions Hyderabad Heroes. On his day he is a lethal performer; two years ago he blasted 36 from the last two overs against England’s Saj Mahmood and Jon Lewis. Though seemingly another veteran recruit – he has played 231 ODIs – Razzaq is still only 28. Butcher talks of his “dynamism”.

Razzaq’s signing seems like an instant response to Wednesday’s limp showing but it has been in the pipeline for a while. Though some supporters are disappointed that Aussie all-rounder Matt Nicholson will have to make way for Razzaq, the plan was always to rest him during this fortnight. Now, he’s gone off to the west country, looking for a beach.

Contact with Razzaq was made via the agent that he shares with Saqlain Mushtaq. Initially, Shahid Afridi was also in the mix when a T20 signing was discussed – his leg-spin might have been a useful replacement for the injured Chris Schofield – but Pakistan commitments would have delayed Afridi’s arrival.

The man who sorted out the arrival of Surrey’s newest recruit is one of the club’s stalwarts: back in the 1980s, Steve Howes and his brother became kind of famous throughout cricket. They were the fastest scoreboard operators in the game. Now, in his 28th year with the club, Howes might be the most important man at the club. They
call him the director of cricket operations. He makes sure Surrey
get 11 men on the park.

“The Razzaq signing has been in the works for about three weeks,” he says. “It seems like a long time but when you need a work permit and a visa… it takes longer dealing with Pakistan rather than, say, Australia. I was on the verge of flying to Lahore myself, thinking that was the only sure way of getting him here on time. We did our best, but he’s still missed the first game, which was a shame.”

Were Surrey concerned that Razzaq’s ICL links would disqualify the team from competing in the Champions League? “Not really,” says Alan Butcher. “We’ve already got Saqlain, who we’re ready to play if it’s right – we just want to concentrate on doing as well as we can in the tournament and then see what the legal people sort out after that. I think it’s the same for all bar the three clubs that don’t have any ICL players.”

Razzaq will meet his team-mates for the first time in the dressing room ahead of the game with T20 champions Kent. Chris Lewis is there but declares himself unfit with a groin strain. He won’t be seen in the tournament again. Meanwhile Jimmy Ormond, whose dad is seriously ill, is given compassionate leave to be with him. With his bounce and surprising pace, Ormond has consistently been one of Twenty 20’s best bowlers. Now Surrey must do without him.

The game is a sell-out, with
21,000 tickets sold well in advance, netting the club £215,000 (the club’s members fill up the other 2000 seats). There are only 500 tickets left for the Middlesex game in a fortnight’s time and soon Surrey will announce that T20 sales have passed the £1m mark for the year. When Ashes tickets go on sale in October, the ticket office just inside the Hobbs Gate expects to do £6m worth of business within a week. These are figures that smaller counties can only dream about.

Whether the fans who flock to
T20 are here for the long run or whether they will move on once new opportunities for drinking in sight of grass open up is something that nobody knows. The Surrey hardcore is bigger than any other county – their 10,000-strong membership is bettered only by the MCC – but many of the T20 crowd are not the cricket hardcore. Walk round the ground. Take a straw poll. Ask Martin, lining up for another beer: “I’ll occasionally watch the Test highlights on TV but I wouldn’t come to a championship game. I come to a couple of Twenty20 games a year: it makes for a good night out after work on a Friday.”

Or Steve, smoking round the back of the OCS Stand: “I don’t support Surrey or Kent – I’m just here for the beer and the fun. This is my first live game and I like it so far. Security has been a bit strict though, stopping beer snakes, which is a bit of a shame.”

Then again, there’s Andrew: “I’m a massive cricket fan – I follow it religiously. I’m keeping up to date with England-New Zealand on my phone. I’m a Surrey fan and always have been… ”

SPIN asks Sheldon whether it concerns him that Twenty20 fills the ground with a possibly fickle new audience, who aren’t necessarily massive cricket fans. Sheldon rejects the suggestion almost violently. “Does it concern me? No – it excites me. I think it’s a whole new opportunity. New people coming to the Brit Oval once might then come to other things here. They might come to a conference or most importantly they might bring their families and get them into cricket, get them involved with Surrey: it’s very like football. They become Surrey fans and Oval people forever. And that’s terribly important.”

The club’s ambition has built a £6m conferencing and hospitality business from virtually nothing in the three years since the OCS Stand was opened. The fact that you can see the City of London from the stand is no hindrance. The City’s financial institutions are key takers for the half-ton of hospitality curry served up during T20. But the real twist is in getting 600 conference delegates through the door on November days when the players are off getting some winter sun. That’s worth £3m of turnover in itself to Surrey; Derbyshire’s total turnover from all activities last year was £2.7m.

But for all the talk of franchise cricket and lucrative conference facilities, this is still a club; even, at only a slight stretch, a family. Although the operation has grown around them, many Surrey staff have been here for decades: Daphne, who sells scorecards from the booth just inside the Hobbs Gate, started 22 years ago. (She says it’s the best job in the world for a cricket fan, even though she is facing away from the play most of the time.) Brian, now the PA announcer, started out operating the scoreboard 27 years ago; Steve Howes started on the groundstaff in 1980; Keith Booth, the scorer, started in the job 13 years ago. Bowling coach Geoff Arnold played his first second XI game for the club here in August 1961. And, for all the big plans, Surrey is a members club, with the chief executive reporting to a committee, elected by the members. The profits are ploughed back into the cricket.

Somewhere in between the notion of the club as family and the trappings of a multi-million pound business lies Surrey’s education and community work. The OCS stand, as well as being, in the lingo, a profit centre, also has a classroom and learning centre. Surrey send coaches into half of Lambeth’s primary schools and every school in the borough is invited to have an open day at the Brit Oval – funded by club sponsors Brit Insurance – with some local children coming on ten-week courses that mix cricket coaching with education.

“We pick guys who aren’t doing so well at school,” says George Foster, Surrey’s Community Manager. “It’s not the high achievers: it’s the ones who aren’t that well motivated and we get 20 hours with them. In a high-impact kind of environment we hope that gets them back to learning better. We’ve been running it now for about 18 months. Every Premiership football club does it and something like 12 of the county cricket clubs.”

Beyond the Brit Oval, there is only one cricket ground in the whole borough and the club is currently looking to develop after-school clubs to provide more opportunities.

The Prince of Wales is at the Surrey-Kent game today – he tosses the coin to get things started, after meeting the players. He is the club’s landlord and the Prince’s Trust – his charity – funds another community scheme at the club. “It’s for the unemployed, ex-offenders, ex-drug users,” says Foster. “The idea is to get them on a course or into a job or at least to have an idea of what they want to do.”

Out on the park, against the reigning T20 champions, Surrey once again look off the pace. Kent openers Joe Denly (on his way to three successive fifties) and Rob Key race to 80/0. When Matt Spriegel is trusted to come on as a front-line spinner in the eighth over, Denly pastes him for a brutal flat-bat six, harvesting 16 off the first four balls. Despite Scott Newman’s 48, Surrey are never in the hunt. The 13-run margin of defeat flatters them.

If anyone is watching in Hyderabad or Mumbai, the only name they will be adding to their list from tonight’s game is Joe Denly.

‘the mind plays a big part’

15.06.08 Sussex, Brit Oval

16.06.08 Middlesex, Lord’s

Surrey are finding their T20 XI by default. Skipper Mark Butcher is still out with his knee injury. The way he is hobbling around behind-the-scenes suggests he may be out for a while. Lewis is now off the radar. Schofield – the country’s leading wicket-taker in last year’s tournament – had the pin taken out of his thumb a week ago, but Butcher snr does not want to risk him before he is absolutely ready. The surprise selection Spriegel’s 2/16 off four against Sussex, meanwhile, could hardly have been bettered by Saqlain; his pacy sweeping out on the boundary – running 40 yards to his left, then 40 yards to his right, diving and saving runs – certainly could not have been.

Then there’s Abdul Razzaq. The Sunday afternoon crowd fills the Brit Oval two-thirds full for a game that is neck-and-neck until Razzaq almost casually takes 28 off one over from Robin Martin-Jenkins. Tension over. Game over. As it turns out, this is to be Surrey’s high point in the tournament.

The next morning, Mark Butcher has an operation on his knee. He is likely to be out for at least a month.

On the drive to Lord’s for the team’s second game in 24 hours, coach Alan Butcher is pondering playing three spinners, after the success of Afzaal and Spriegel yesterday. “It’s certainly a possibility. It’s a televised game,” he says, apparently obliquely. “So the wicket will be fairly central, which should mean a big playing area.”

The coach says that he couldn’t have hoped for more from the bowlers or the fielding in the early games. He’s not alarmed by the
way the team’s batted, but he is disappointed. The problem has been shot selection, going for cross-batted glory shots instead of building an innings. In Twenty20 the ‘V’ is wider, he says – between extra cover and straight mid-wicket – but playing straight early in your innings is still the best option. Surely his top order, one of the most experienced in the game know that already? “Well, yes,” he concedes. “But sometimes the mind plays a big part. It’s about having the confidence to bat through overs eight to 14, knowing that you need to keep the score going but that you also need to still be there, going into the last six overs. Knowing you can cash in later.”

In the game, James Benning shows that he must have been listening in those dressing-room chats, though possibly not to the bit about cashing in. The pre-tournament favourite to hit the fastest 50, instead completes one of the slowest 50s yet seen in Twenty20, as he carries his bat through the innings: 50 not out, from 53 balls, including just two boundaries. This out-of-character knock will be his last of the tournament. He’s in pain when he comes off and the two discs bulging from his back will put him out for the foreseeable future. On Friday, he will see a specialist in London. After that, he will have an epidural injection to help numb the pain. He may be out for the rest of the season.

With Benning batting through, Surrey do not suffer a top-order collapse at Lord’s. Partly this is because Jordan is promoted from No 9 to No 3. The 19-year-old plays a brilliant innings of aggressive but proper shots, flat-batting international bowlers past their ears, then stepping back to cut spinners for four. When he is out Surrey are 61/2 off 51 balls. An almost ideal start.But rather than collapsing early, Surrey manage to collapse in the middle. The last six overs bring 46. Both Brown and Ramprakash hole out on the boundary. Interestingly, Jordan is not given the chance to reprise his innings in the rest of the tournament, as he is demoted back to No 9.

As it happens, Saqlain is kept in reserve again tonight but his absence is possibly academic. Surrey’s total of 141 is actually close to par for Twenty20 on the big Lord’s outfield. But it’s not enough tonight.

“We’re trying our guts out”

18.06.08 Hampshire, Brit Oval

20.06.08 Essex, Chelmsford

Mark Ramprakash is the first player to arrive at the Brit Oval on a match day. If it’s a championship game – 11am start – he’ll be there from 8.30. For a Twenty20 – kick off: 5.30 – he’ll be in the dressing room from 2pm. He gets ready slowly, getting his kit prepared, adjusting his bat, his grips, his boots. At 3.30 he goes out onto the field to start his personal warm-ups. He likes 20 minutes of throw-downs. Players arrive at different times. Food is laid out in the players’ dining room at 3pm. Most like to eat then and take time getting ready – but 4.15 is the deadline for everyone to be ‘on deck’ for the team warm-up.

Against Hampshire, another top-scoring blast from Razzaq (65 off 34 balls) and, in his first game, Saqlain’s 3/23 is not enough to stave off a fourth defeat. Now, Surrey need to beat Essex to stay in the competition. But first they need to get to Chelmsford.

Surrey don’t have a team bus. Not many counties – beyond Essex, Kent and Durham – do. “The guys live all over the place,” says Steve Howes. “It would be a logistical nightmare. We’ve done it a couple of times but it was a nightmare and the players don’t like it. There was an occasion when [then-coach] Steve Rixon thought it was a good idea for team bonding. But telling a few of the players they were going by coach got him quite an ear bashing.

“There will come a time when we have to look at the number of miles they drive, the safety aspect of it. One time they were playing a county game at Chelmsford, interrupted by a one-day game in Hereford, about 180 miles away. They finished that at 7:30, then come all the way back to play the second day of the three day game. How do people not get killed? The coach would be a safer option but the logistics would be very difficult, given our location.”

With the M25 clogged, Surrey only have ten players on deck by the time the official team warm-up starts. Matt Spriegel is one of them. He’s come down on the train after his last exam. Good news: he got one of his pet questions in his last exam this morning: “Passion in Sport.” Bad news: he’s not selected for tonight’s game. Ramprakash likes the control three spinners gives him, but Chelmsford is so much smaller than the Brit Oval that the risk/reward balance is tipped.

Surrey are bowled out for 94 in front of a hostile crowd. The fifth defeat in six games effectively puts them out of the tournament. “It
was quite a sombre feeling in the dressing room,” says keeper Jonathan Batty later. “We’d done so much talking beforehand. So we were just saying, ‘We know we’re all trying our guts out, possibly trying a bit too hard still, not relaxing enough’. But we gave it a red hot go. The batsmen got out playing their shots. It’s not like we choked. We had Essex four or five down quite early but then we let them off the hook by not hitting our straps with the ball. We could have bowled them out for a lot less.”

Playing at Chelmsford brings out the new football-style atmosphere of T20. The sell-out crowds create a great atmosphere but, says Batty, when you’re out in the middle it sometimes feels as if it’s all on the verge of boiling over. “One of our boys was on the boundary at Chelmsford being abused by a group of 20 blokes, screaming at him. There’s a steward standing next to him not doing anything. It’s getting like football – except in football, the players are moving around. In cricket, you might be in the same place for 40 minutes or an hour. At some point it’s going to get to you. I can see a point where a player will be over the boards and into the crowd, swinging punches. Nothing’s happened this year but it’s getting closer.

“We played Kent at Beckenham last year: to get back to the pavilion you had to push your way through the Kent spectators: you’ve got boys there with their pints of beer, they’re not getting out your way. They don’t like you because you play for Surrey. Fair enough. But you’re gonna knock someone’s beer over, someone’s going to react and it could all kick off. It’s getting closer all the time.”

The sussex team song

22.06.08 Sussex, Hove.

23.06.08 Hampshire, Rose Bowl

At the end of a tournament that features eight defeats, Matthew Spriegel will look back on the aftermath of the game against Sussex as the campaign’s nadir. “We were having our team talk afterwards and we got interrupted by their team song. That was quite a lowpoint, having to listen to that. The silence in our dressing room after that game, well, it just spoke volumes about how everyone was feeling.”

Surrey are officially out, yet all their remaining opponents – Hampshire, Kent, Middlesex – are still in with a chance of the £2.5m jackpot.

For the game at the Rose Bowl, Saqlain is rested. “There’s a lot of cricket at the back end of the season and we didn’t want to risk him getting injured in a game that didn’t really mean that much to us,” says Mark Butcher, who is in the TV gantry for the evening, but has not, apparently, read Sky’s guidelines on hyperbole.

During the Surrey innings, captain Ramprakash blows up at a Sky cameraman who he believes is invading his space. Butcher snr has to come and restrain him. When Surrey field, Ramprakash has terse words for umpire Peter Hartley after Surrey are no-balled for not having enough close catchers during a Powerplay over. Ramprakash had the same problem last week against Middlesex at Lord’s.

Later, Ramprakash still seems put out that Hartley has “applied the letter of the law”. Speaking to his old team-mate Ian Ward on Sky, he also suggests that the younger batters down the order have to go through a learning process in T20. That the experienced batters have again left the team five- or six-down coming into the final overs is a subject not broached by Ward, possibly wisely.

Hampshire, full of Kolpaks and fired by Ian Harvey, win with 11 balls to spare. Razzaq is dismissed by a fantastic catch by Michael Carberry on the boundary, leaping to turn a six into a wicket. When Hampshire bat, Surrey’s Scott Newman is offered a similar chance on the rope by Harvey but contrives to jump inside the ball and fall flat on his backside as the ball goes for four.

Tuesday is a free day. With ten games in 16 days, Surrey don’t have any formal training or net sessions during the T20 but, despite the apparent fixture congestion, fitness coach Matt Church sees this as a good time for players to get their fitness right for the remainder of
the county season. When the championship starts again, players are on the park for five or six days straight, with the days off used for pure rest. Twenty20 fortnight is a good period to do strength and conditioning work. On match-days, Church organises workouts for players not involved in games; on the days between games, players go into the Brit Oval for massages or gym work. A white-board on the gym wall traces players’ best efforts in 3k runs, 1.5k rows and bench-pressing.

Emotions running high

25.06.08 Kent, Canterbury

Wednesday and the Brit Oval is packed again, for the NatWest Series game between England and New Zealand: 23,000 in the ground, 800 temporary catering staff, 80,000 pints of beer sold. While Paul Sheldon may be concerned that Surrey’s on-field slip-ups might eventually affect the crowds, England’s lamentable ODI record certainly does not seem to stop the punters coming back.

Sheldon would like to have even more in the ground, but the proposed ground redevelopment – 2,000 extra seats, luxury hotel – has been turned down at the planning stage: the Health and Safety Executive are concerned that the iconic gasometers that overlook the ground present a safety issue (the three local schools and the existing 23,000 seats notwithstanding). Surrey are appealing. “We’re confused and disappointed and we now face an enquiry that could cost us £500,000 in legal fees,” says Sheldon. “Our developer faces building inflation. It’s a blow.”

The appeal will be heard in October but the original plan – to open the new-look ground for the 2009 Ashes – is scuppered.

Surrey, meanwhile, register their second win of the tournament. With Ramprakash dropping himself down to No 8, Razzaq again top scores. But 166/7 looks below par, especially when Azhar Mahmood gets going in the chase. Edged out of Surrey mid-season last year, Azhar still has good friends in the Surrey team. But as the game reaches boiling point, he and young fast bowler Jade Dernbach square up after a ball that Mahmood perceives as a beamer.

“Emotions were running high,” says Spriegel later. “But they shook hands at the end of the game. They’re fine now. It shows that it means a lot to us. Even though we’re out of the competition we don’t just want to turn up and accept defeat. We want to go and win games and that showed in the performance we gave.”

Kent need 32 off three overs when Spriegel returns to bowl to Azhar. Razzaq comes over and advises the youngster on how to bowl to his erstwhile Pakistan team-mate. The over only goes for seven. Surrey are in the driving seat. With 14 needed off the last over, Razzaq himself tempts Mahmood into one big shot too many and he holes out on the boundary, a running catch above his head by Chris Murtagh, who has been brought in partly to bolster the team’s fielding. Four balls later, 17-year-old substitute Jason Roy settles it with another brilliant catch to remove Ryan McLaren.

With a slightly younger line-up, Surrey’s fielding is suddenly inspirational and match-winning. “It’s a young man’s game,” says keeper Jonathan Batty. “Young guys tend to be more dynamic in the field, throw themselves around more. Every run you save can make a massive difference, more so than in four-day cricket where you’ve got longer to catch up. We’ve looked a better fielding side later on when some of the youngsters have played but still some of our better fielders have been the older players. But fielding probably hasn’t been one of our stronger points.”

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

27.06.08 Middlesex, Brit Oval.

Surrey are already out and Middlesex are through to the quarter-finals. There’s nothing on the game but there’s local rivalry and another sell-out crowd and a Surrey team trying to get used to winning again.

Abdul Razzaq turns up at 4pm, 90 minutes before kick-off, family in tow. His children are dressed as Alice in Wonderland and Spiderman. Ali Brown turns up at the same time, on his own. As it turns out, he will be ‘rested’ tonight. On a one-year contract, it might just mean that the most destructive English one-day player of his generation has played his last T20. In England, at least.

The music during the match is controlled by John Taylor, leaning over a mixing desk in a gazebo at the Pavilion End. He has 26 tunes on the 26 letter keys on the keyboard. Some for fours, some for sixes, some for wickets and one for the umpires.

Yet again, Taylor doesn’t have to press his fours and sixes buttons too often during the Surrey innings. There are just twelve fours and three sixes as the Brown Caps make it to 139/8. If Jonathan Batty and Chris Schofield hadn’t pummelled the 17th over for 27, everyone would have been going home a lot earlier. Middlesex get the runs with nine balls to spare.

The fielding of the younger Surrey team again produces some champagne moments. Right in front of the pavilion, Chris Murtagh takes a stunning, running catch to remove Tyron Henderson. With the youngsters Murtagh, Spriegel and Roy patrolling the boundaries, Surrey look a different team. The 17-year-old Roy – making his debut – becomes an instant hit with the crowd at the Vauxhall End and ends up getting cheered to the rafters every time he touches the ball. Roy looks bemused. Spriegel starts trying to whip up the crowd on his side.

Surrey have used 20 players over the last 18 days and have never really got their first XI on the field. Any talk of Indian leagues and Champions Leagues was concluded a week ago at Chelmsford. Where did it turn against them? The team know they let themselves down with their batting. Everyone SPIN talks to mentions small but important turning-points: Kent’s Darren Stevens surviving a plumb lbw shout and going on to make 31 off 18 at the Brit Oval in the second game is a particular favourite.

Yet, off the field, the club is in better shape than pretty much all their county rivals. After the weekend, tickets for the Brit Oval’s ICC World T20 games will go on sale and sell out almost immediately. Next week, chief exec Paul Sheldon will present his vision of the future of English cricket – possibly involving franchises, possibly involving an extended T20 tournament – to the ECB, hoping that the new domestic calendar is not, as reports suggest, a fait accompli.

Before all that, in 48 hours’ time, on Sunday morning, the team – and Daphne the scorecard seller, Brian the PA announcer and Steve the fixer – will be back at the Brit Oval for the LV County Championship match against Kent. There’s ten games to go and Surrey still fancy their chances.

Tags: Abdul Razzaq, Alan Butcher, Chris Lewis, English cricket, IPL franchise, Mark Ramprakash, Matthew Spriegel, Paul Sheldon, Surrey CCC, Surrey cricket, The Brit Oval, The Oval

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