SK Play of the day: Surrey losing 8 wickets for 37 in the finals of the Royal London One Day Domestic match
Surrey suffered an almighty collapse in the finals of the Royal London One-Day Domestic finals when they lost their last 8 wickets for just 37 runs in 15.2 overs against Warwickshire at Lord's. They were eventually dismissed for 136 runs way before their allotted 50 overs.
The conditions were murky right from the outset and the pitch too offered assistance for both the seam and spin bowlers. Thus when Gareth Batty won the toss and chose to bat first, few eyebrows were raised. However, Surrey were 99 for 2 at one stage and this decision seemed to be justified. Kumar Sangakkara and Rory Burns were hanging in and were ticking the strike over. Right arm seam bowler Oliver Hannon-Dalby then decided to step up and make his presence felt. He removed Sangakkara and then Ben Foakes and pushed Surrey on the backfoot.
By then, the pitch started offering assistance to the spinners as well and the ball started turning significantly. New Zeland off-spinner Jeetan Patel made the most of it and chipped in with the crucial wicket of Zafar Ansari. All of a sudden Surrey had lost 3 wickets for 3 runs, and all the momentum had swung in the favour of Warwickshire.
Rory Burns tried to hang in the centre and gritted out an innings even as wickets fell at the other end. The two Currans, Sam and Tom who are pivotal members of the Surrey team could not rescue their team as Sam was bowled when he attempted to swing across the line to a ball from Ateeq Javid, and Tom was run out by Hannon-Dalby.
Burns then decided to hit out of trouble but was cleaned up by a spinning off break by Jeetan Patel and everything went south for Surrey. However, it has to be mentioned that their start was an impressive one as Jason Roy and Steve Davies started off in an impressive manner and put up 45 runs for the first wicket in 8.3 overs.
Chris Woakes has been in sizzling form this season and he was too hot to handle for the tail and uprooted the wickets of Gareth Batty and Jade Dernbach in successive overs to end a sorry story for Surrey.
It required a colossal effort from the bowlers if they harbour hopes of making a match out of it, but then the score was never going to be enough, especially given the fact that they were up against the likes of Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott. Warwickshire got to the target without breaking any sweat in the end.