MORE heavy rain in south London meant a second successive day of little cricket and left Surrey’s Specsavers County Championship Division One match against Yorkshire at the Kia Oval looking destined to be a draw.
Surrey have reached 164-5 in their first innings, from 49.4 overs, with Steven Davies and Ben Foakes the not out batsmen on 29 and 14 respectively.
A total of 142 overs have been lost so far in the game, and just 16.4 overs were possible on day two before the first rain showers arrived at 12.19pm. Repeated downpours then made the Oval groundstaff’s attempts to mop up a futile exercise and play for the day was eventually called off soon after 4.30pm.
The 79 minutes of play at the start of the day were action-packed, however, with David Willey and Steven Patterson taking three wickets for no runs in nine balls as Yorkshire put Surrey’s top order under severe pressure and, initially, reduced them to 121-5 after they had resumed on 95-2.
Davies hit Adil Rashid for two fours in the leg spinner’s only over shortly before the weather interruption, while Foakes has also done his bit to steady the Surrey first innings after Willey removed Zafar Ansari and Jason Roy and Patterson grabbed the prized wicket of Aaron Finch.
Finch and Ansari, who had rallied Surrey from 36-2 on the opening morning of the game, took their third wicket stand to 85 before Willey fired a yorker through left-hander Ansari’s defences to bowl him for 40 and detonate two stumps out of the ground in spectacular fashion.
Two balls later, in the next over from Patterson, a checked push-drive brought Australian batsman Finch’s downfall for an aggressive 57-ball 52, with the bowler jubilant as the catch was taken at short extra cover.
Then, in Willey’s next over, Roy pushed at a ball angled across him by the left-arm seamer and keeper Andrew Hodd took the thin edge at the third attempt to send back the England one-day batsman for a duck.
Willey said: “It’s a pretty flat pitch, so for us to get three for 70 this morning was a good session for us. Finch is a dangerous player, and we talked about a few different options to him. We knew we’d get a chance at some stage, so it was important we took it. I think we bowled quite nicely today and got our rewards. We deserved the wickets we got.
“Aaron was hitting the ball very nicely down the ground, and we thought we might get a chance in that area. Thankfully, we did.” On bowling Ansari, he added: “I missed my length by about seven foot and bowled a yorker. Anti-skill! I was meant to bowl a length ball that held its line into off-stump. It was a fluke.”
* Yorkshire’s Ed Barnes has been included in the England U-19 squad for two four-day games and a three-match one-day series against Sri Lanka.
Barnes’s county colleague Jared Warner was due to have led the side in the one-day series but misses out with a back problem.
The games against Sri Lanka run from July 26 to August 16.