Bears locked in as super Surrey turn the tables
Warwickshire 247 & 169 lost to Surrey 252 & 390 by 226 runs
WARWICKSHIRE director of cricket Dougie Brown emerged from a hour-long dressing-room inquest to admit that he and his players are feeling the pressure after a second successive defeat left them facing a relegation battle rather than a title challenge.
When Warwickshire trounced Surrey by 10 wickets at Guildford in early July, they appeared well placed to push for their first Championship since 2012. But Surrey took their revenge here to leapfrog Warwickshire and leave their hosts just 17 points off the relegation zone.
The title remains a mathematical possibility for the Bears but, realistically, survival is now their main objective in a season that threatens to unravel despite having Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott, two prolific run scorers at Test level, available for the entire campaign.
Brown said: “I think we all feel under pressure as a team, of course we do. We know what we are playing for this year, nobody likes losing.
“I would be lying if I said I don’t feel any pressure at all.You feel pressure every day you come to your job because you know exactly what you are playing for. It’s a very tough division. We are not the only team who are being challenged. A number of big teams are being challenged.
“That’s the nature of it. There are a lot of good teams, a lot of results will go one way and the next time you play they will go the other way.
“We just need to make sure, no matter how much pressure I am under or the team is under, that each one of us, as an individual, turns it around over the next four games.”
Warwickshire had an hour-long dressing room lock-in after Surrey’s crushing win but Brown believes it will be of benefit over the final weeks of the season.
“It was a full and frank discussion. It needed to happen, it’s a shame that we have done it on the back of losing a game, but that’s the nature of how things are,” he said
“We’ve let ourselves down over the last couple of games, getting in good positions and not being able to follow through.We can’t afford to be reactive, we have to be on the front foot and we have to be the team making the first move. We can’t afford to take a couple of punches before we decide to punch back.
“It’s a very tight division there are very few points separating the bottom from the top. We know the last four games are incredibly important, there’s no running away from that. But there are enough games left for us to turn it around.”
If Warwickshire are to avoid the drop and Brown is to silence his critics they will need more substantial contributions from the top order. In both innings here they lost half their wickets for under 100 and only Keith Barker topped 50 in the match.
Surrey showed the collective spirit that Warwickshire lacked with Sam Curran producing an outstanding all-round performance and Kumar Sangakkara marking his return to county cricket after helping the Tallawahs win the Caribbean Premier League with a match-shaping 88 in the second innings.
Surrey captain Gareth Batty said: “At the start of the season Warwickshire were being tipped to be right up there. They’ve got some wonderful players and had pretty much their full stock at Guildford and the senior players played us off the park.
“But credit to how we’ve rebounded on a very good wicket and probably reversed the roles. We deserved the points and played some very fine cricket.
“Win another three and we’ll be in the mix. I’m being serious, anything can happen. I am not big on looking back.We have had a couple of occasions where we have not played well but I hope we’ve addressed some of the things we’ve got wrong and we’re enjoying our cricket.”