Burns leading Surrey to brink of title success
Surrey are on course for the victory that would earn them the Specsavers County Championship for the first time in 16 years. They will also take the title if they should bat out for a draw. And, even if Surrey lose to Worcestershire, they will sew it up in their two remaining games, such has been their dominance.
Surrey would have been handed the championship pennant on a plate yesterday if the cricket discipline commission had penalised Somerset for their Taunton pitch against Lancashire, but while the commission rated it “below average”, it deducted no points from Somerset for “lack of evidence”.
Somerset, however, were warned that they were “treading a very fine line” – all in all, the sort of judgement that Ben Stokes and Alex Hales might accept when it is their turn in front of the commission on Dec 5.
Rory Burns, Surrey’s captain and tipped to be Alastair Cook’s successor in Sri Lanka, put on 70 for the first wicket with Mark Stoneman, Cook’s opening partner at the start of this season, when they chased 272. Surrey’s target would have been much more challenging without Morne Morkel, who steamed in either side of tea to take five wickets, at one point for five runs.
All counties are sapped by injuries by September but some have more resources than others, Surrey most of all and Worcestershire perhaps least. Morkel has been the dominant figure in the first division, even more than Burns, with his 50 wickets at only 13.9 each.
Burns, who looks towards midwicket as the bowler runs in so his dominant eye does not take over, is more angular and less rounded than Stoneman, but more composed. The higher Stoneman rose in Test cricket, the more susceptible to self-doubt and vertigo he appeared to be. When Burns played and missed here – more often than Stoneman – he adjusted his gloves and settled down, calm in the knowledge he is the only Division One batsman with a thousand runs this season.
In their past two home Tests, however, Sri Lanka selected one seamer – and he did not open the bowling. In both innings of both Tests against South Africa, the home side opened with two spinners. And as there is little chance that Sri Lanka’s pitches and strategy have altered greatly in the two months since, it would be pointless for England to open with a conventional opening batsman, versed in the ways of swing and seam.
Burns deserves to go on the Test tour, as a member of the squad, to learn the ropes with a view to opening the batting in the West Indies in the new year.
The Test openers in Sri Lanka should be James Vince and Liam Livingstone: Vince averages 58 against spin in Tests; Livingstone scored an impressive century in each innings of the Lions’ A Test in Sri Lanka last year.
Against Worcestershire’s leftarm spinner, Burns used his feet more than Stoneman, to work through the leg side, but Ben Twohig, 20, while the same height as Rangana Herath, has taken 430 fewer Test wickets.