And so Middlesex rocked up at the Oval for the London Derby in the Blast. Surrey are serial underachievers in this competition. There is some misconception in legacy media about how we are the short-format kings. That’s absolute bollocks. We’ve won it once and that was over a quarter of a Century ago.
Hey hoe. Derby days down at the Oval are always fun. It’s a shame that our friends over the river couldn’t return the favour with their poxy 7,000 crowd back at HQ when Surrey were the visitors at Lord’s. That Sunday midday scheduling was just bonkers and should never be allowed to happen again.
The talk ahead of the game on Wednesday evening was that the Oval was a sellout. It didn’t quite get there looking at the telly pictures but it came close. The demographic was the usual Bright Young Things, fresh from their day jobs in the city.
This was a key match for Surrey. A record going into the game of played 2, lost 2 shows that our progress in the Blast was in the balance.
The traditional pattern for Surrey in this competition is to rampage in the group stages and then fall apart when we get down to the business end of the competition. It seems that we have accelerated this pattern this season, with a super quick start and then a super quick tail off already.
Surrey did seem fired up, taking to the field when play started. There was in particular some tight bowling from Will Jacks. Middlesex were poor with the bat. TC has seen better death bowling overs as he delivered three wides and gifted Surrey a paltry more three runs to their final total.
The young Middlesex side came out looking a little sheepish in the field. The game never really got going as a spectacle or even a contest.
Shout out to J-Roy who fell for short on his 50. Olly Pope got us over the line with a timely half century. Surrey won the game with 35 balls to spare, which is something of a comment on the lack of parity between these two once great teams.