Surrey's worrying start continues

SURREY'S season may be less than three weeks old but already it is looking eerily similar to last year's dismal campaign.

Two defeats inside a week, at perennial strugglers Derbyshire in the County Championship and a thrashing at the hands of Gloucestershire in the Friends Provident Trophy, will have reminded everyone the size of the rebuilding job facing manager Chris Adams.

At Derby an appalling first day's batting display saw the Brown Caps skittled out for just 131, their second consecutive match without a batting point.

Having won the toss stand-in skipper Michael Brown elected to bat but he was soon back in the pavilion as Graham Wagg ripped through the Surrey top order.

The left-armer took full advantage of the swinging new ball, removing Brown, Scott Newman, Laurie Evans and Usman Afzaal with less than 50 on the board.

Only Jonathan Batty (36) provided any sort of resistance as Wagg and South African Greg Smith ripped through the lower middle order as the Brown Caps were rolled over before tea.

However, Surrey showed excellent team spirit to fight back and were still in the game after they reduced their hosts to 82-7 in reply.

But the following morning it started to go wrong for Brown's men as Smith and Wagg (35) built a solid partnership taking the Phantoms' total towards 200.

Then a last wicket partnership between Smith (94 not out) and Ian Hunter (47) gave the hosts a formidable lead of 143.

Pedro Collins, recalled to the side after being left out against Gloucestershire the week before, starred with the ball taking 5-75.

Up against it with plenty of time left in the game Surrey produced their best cricket of the season and racked up 360 in their second innings to make a game of it.

Newman, another player returning to the side, notched up his 14th First Class ton (124) and was well supported by Afzaal (39), James Benning (36) and Chris Schofield (31).

Chasing 220 to win could have proved problematic but an opening stand of 89 between Garry Park and Steve Stubbings set up a comfortable five-wicket victory.

The Brown Caps were boosted on Sunday by the return from suspension of Mark Ramprakash but the 39-year-old could do little to prevent Surrey from slipping to another loss this time at Gloucestershire.

Having chosen to bowl Andre Nel and Jade Dernbach started positively but the Brown Caps lost momentum and William Porterfield (74) and Chris Taylor (63) helped the home side post 268-9 from their 50 overs.

New Zealand international Grant Elliot took 2-56 off 10 on debut for the Brown Caps.

In reply Surrey never looked like chasing the runs down as they lost Benning, Ramprakash and Batty cheaply.

Wickets continued to tumble as Surrey slumped to an embarrassing 140 all out.