To the Oval! …on Thursday morning for day one of Surrey vs Notts in the County Championship. This game was also deemed the Festival of Red Bull cricket by the club, which basically means a glorified beer festival, along with a cricket car boot sale taking place around the back of the Peter May. I passed on both fronts.
The more interesting action was taking place out in the middle. This was a make or break game for both teams. Surrey have been poor all season. You don’t fight for championships by simply drawing matches.
The narrative from afar has been that Notts have been dominant. My cricketing companion for the day was a Notts fan. It was interesting to hear his perspective, which was rather similar to the Surrey story of 2026. Notts are still within a chance of the title only through drawing matches and picking up bonus points.
ChatGPT had reliably - or perhaps not so reliably - informed me the night before that a late title charge by Surrey is still possible but to achieve that a comprehensive win over Notts was needed. Anything less and we couldn’t be back looking behind our own backsides and staring relegation in the face.
There’s nothing quite like the County Championship, which is just as well, seeing as all the horrid Hundred, crappy banners had been taken down. It was good to see The Oval back in its pretty much purified form, with none of the franchise crap littering around the grand old place.
I approached this game in a rather sober state. I also ended in a rather sober state. I’ve had one too many days out on the piss in the Peter May already so far this season.
My sobriety was made all the better when I was rewarded with some early wickets. The grounds team had prepared a lush green wicket. This was a game for the seamers and no spin it to win in sight.
The weather was always going to have a say in this game. The forecast looked a little dodgy for the first day of play but then set to pick up as we enter the weekend.
No surprises to see an hour or so into the start of the play and the floodlights came on, followed by the inevitable rain. This was a shame as Surrey had picked up the early momentum and looked like doing some serious damage to the Notts weakened attack ahead of the lunch break.
And then whaddyaknow? Lunch was taken in bright sunshine; out came the players briefly for the afternoon session before buggering off back into the hutch as the rain started again. Cricket sometimes does itself no favours.
We had by now shifted from the Peter May over to the Bedsar, which is also known as the No Fun Stand. There’s no official alcohol ban and there’s no official stance on limited conversation, but fuck me - it’s like a bloody morgue up in there.
Not a lot happened when play resumed. This was a very, very cagey period for both teams. Surrey sensed more wickets. Notts were just happy to block, block and then block again.
The highlight for the mid-afternoon session was the skipper taking off his cricketing sun hat to reveal a pretty much shaven head. It was quite a statement from Rory and one hopes one that is not aligned with the Samson and Delilah storyline.
We ended up back where we started for the afternoon session in the Peter May. Dark clouds descended once again over SE11 as Surrey tried to take out the Notts attack within the first day. It got a little bit windy. We made a strategic move down to the lower tier of the Pavilion.
A pleasant half-hour passage of play followed and then the Umps looked at the dark skies and called time out once again.
We retreated to the Surrey store to have a good piss take at some of the Hundred merchandise. There was a rather fetching black Surrey sweatshirt that was new to the range. This was priced competitively at £60. I think the pricing of £40 for a similar MI London piece of tat tells you all you need to know about the price for everything when it comes towards the stupid shitty franchise.
We called time on our pleasant day out and headed out on a brief stroll around our old sunny Stockwell patch.
Later back at base we realised we had missed another half hour of play where Notts annoyingly added on some more runs to reach a total of 184 for the day whilst Surrey lost an early wicket with the Vicar.
Sober Surrey days out at the cricket are decent fun. Who knew?
Chin chin.
