The word of Ken
Josh Bohannon top-scored with 84 but Lancashire were hit by career-best hauls from Dan Lawrence and Cam Steel as Surrey’s spinners combined to bowl the Red Rose side out for 202 when this opening Vitality County Championship match finally got underway after lunch on the second day, following the opening day washout.
Lancashire looked to be in good position at 150-2 but then lost eight wickets for 52 runs inside 18 overs during the final hour of play. With five overs to bat, Surrey reached the close on 11 without loss to trail by 191 runs on a fast-moving and eventful day.
Bohannon produced a mature, patient innings to keep the defending champions attack at bay after Rory Burns won the toss and opted to bowl on a day where the strong winds that swept across the ground made for less-than-ideal conditions. The leading run scorer in Division One last season, Bohannon picked up where left off moving steadily to reach his half century from 89 balls before hitting two straight sixes off leg spinner Lawrence and passing 4,000 first-class runs for Lancashire in the process.
Lawrence, however, went on to have a big say in the latter stages of the day when he snared Bohannon courtesy of a great reaction catch by Jamie Smith at short leg and then trapped Matty Hurst lbw first ball. Tom Bruce hit a six off Steel but became Lawrence’s fourth wicket after nicking a catch to wicketkeeper Ben Foakes.
Steel (5-25) then removed Tom Aspinwall, Tom Bailey, Will Williams and Nathan Lyon in quick succession as wickets tumbled during the final hour with Lancashire slipping disastrously from 150-2 to 202 all out.
Lancashire handed debuts to overseas signings Lyon and Bruce with 20-year-old all-rounder Aspinwall making his first-class debut while Surrey had Lawrence making his debut following his winter move from Essex.
And it was Lawrence, brought into the attack as early as the tenth over, who made an early breakthrough when play finally got under way at 1.10pm. The leg spinner, having launched a full toss the ball before, readjusted his length and clung on to a good catch low to his left when Keaton Jennings drove firmly back up the wicket having made 11.
That wicket fell with the score on 26 but Bohannon and Luke Wells put up good resistance in the face of some accurate Surrey bowling to add 67 runs inside 30 overs. Having driven and pulled to good effect, Wells departed just before tea for 40 after pulling Tom Lawes high to the midwicket boundary where Lawrence took a nicely judged catch.
Bohannon and George Balderson continued in similar vein after the break with another good 57-run alliance across 23.4 overs, Balderson compiling a steady 21 but bowled by a sharply turning leg break from Steel’s fifth delivery midway through the evening session.
That wicket heralded the start of the late evening collapse that put a completely different spin on the day’s proceedings.
“We were good for the majority (of today) and it’s pretty obvious we got it wrong for period at the end,” said Josh Bohannon.
“That’s going to happen at the start of the season. People are finding their feet and, in a way, it’s good that it happens now and not later down the line.
“We talked at tea about how we’d just lost a wicket before the break so me and George (Balderson) had to do a bit of hard work after and earn the right to push on. It was a pitch that was quite hard to pierce the field.
“It didn’t quite go as planned, but that’s the game.”
“There’s enough (spin) out there, it was pretty consistent, and there’s bounce which will be really good for Nathan,” he added.
“He’s going to play a massive role for us if we can get quite a bit more cricket played in this fixture. We’ve got one of the best spinners in the world and one starting his international career who is getting better by the day. It’s going to be really exciting to watch – especially for me at short-leg!
“It will be really good if we can get some more cricket in tomorrow. Hopefully, the weather holds off for us.
“We are looking at how we can get a result in potentially two and a half days. There’s enough tackiness in the pitch which is pretty similar to our nets and both Nathan and Tommy bowled beautifully there this week, that’s why we chose the team we did.”
And Bohannon was pleased to have got runs but disappointed to have missed out on reaching three figures.
“It was nice to get out there and get a feel for the surface again, and play against a really good bowling attack,” he said.
“To start the season off with eighty-odd is really pleasing. It was also gutting (to get out) because I pride myself on getting big hundreds and felt my dismissal was a little soft. But there were lots of positives too and hopefully there many more to come.”
