Future’s so Surrey and
Middlesex 101-8 lost to Surrey 105-5 by 5 wickets (D/L)
ENGLAND prospects Ben Foakes and Zafar Ansari handled the pressure at Lord’s to keep Surrey on track for One-Day Cup redemption.
On a miserable London evening, play finally got underway at 6.30pm – with the match reduced to 16 overs a side – and Middlesex immediately struggled under light drizzle.
Only wicket-keeper John Simpson (29) made a score of any note and with qualification for both teams hinged on a positive result, Surrey entered the interval eyeing up a simple chase of 102.
This was after Tom Curran claimed 3-26 from four overs, while Jade Dernbach continued his fine form by picking up two wickets.
But it was not to be so easy for Surrey to chase. Jason Roy, on the back of an unbeaten 93 in the abandoned game against Glamorgan, fell to Toby Roland-Jones for a golden duck.
And at 35-4, Surrey were running out of chances to steady the ship before Foakes and Ansari combined for the fifth-wicket stand.
Foakes has been touted as a cure to England’s wicket-keeping worries – and pulled off a superb diving catch to take Nick Gubbins off Tom Curran – but his batting does not play secondfiddle.
An assured, but brisk, 45 runs off 35 balls, allied to all-rounder Ansari’s near run-a-ball unbeaten 29, dissipated any Surrey nerves and set up a quarter-final at Northamptonshire.
Skipper Gareth Batty, who also picked up a wicket, said: “The beauty of a total was that we only needed to be at sixes for the duration, and then at some point someone drops the anchor and takes a bit of stock. (Foakes and Ansari) did it quite magnificently.
“I’m pretty sad for Foakesy that the shot he got out with didn’t go over the boundary for six, he deserved a 50 in the end.”
This type of victory bodes well for a Surrey side that, having restricted Gloucestershire to 220 in last year’s final, threw it all away.
Batty added: “It still hurts how things ended last year, so there was even more on this game for us, having not started how we wanted to in this competition.”