Burns sparks celebrations as Surrey clinch title
SURREY coach Gareth Batty hailed his side after they clinched the County Championship with a round to spare. Surrey wrapped up their 21st title with a 10-wicket thrashing of Yorkshire, having learned half an hour earlier that Hampshire — their only rivals for the crown — had lost to Kent. The trophy will be handed over next week in Manchester, where Surrey’s final game, against Lancashire, now becomes a lap of honour.
This was their eighth win out of 13 with no defeats. Hampshire have won nine but been beaten three times and, unlike Surrey, have not lost a stream of players to England. Appropriately, the winning runs were struck by captain Rory Burns, who has put his winter disappointments with England behind him to top score for the club with 763 runs — one of eight Surrey players to have averaged 40 or more with the bat this season from at least five matches.
Batty described Burns’ ever-presence as ‘gold’, and called seamer Dan Worrall, the Australian who has honed his game on the merciless pitches of Adelaide, ‘probably the best signing that I’ve seen in county cricket’. With a game to go, Worrall has 39 wickets at 24, including four more here as Yorkshire slipped from their overnight 89 for two to 208 all out. Burns and Ryan Patel then took six overs to knock off a target of 55, giving Surrey their first title since 2018, and sparking celebrations at a ground temporarily renamed in honour of Micky Stewart, their 90-year-old former captain. Yorkshire, meanwhile, must not slip up in their final game against bottom-of-the-table Gloucestershire if they are to avoid being dragged into relegation danger.