Hampshire scrape through
Published 13 June 2007
A devastating spell for bowling from Hampshire’s Stuart Clarke, meant that despite a fantastic partnership between Chris Schofield and Rikki Clarke Surrey never scored enough runs as the Hawks went to victory and as such qualified for the Friends Provident Trophy semi finals.
After winning the toss, Mark Ramprakash decided to bat first. Surrey got off to the worst possible start as James Benning was given out lbw to Clarke second ball of the innings.
Clarke bowled in very awkward areas and the pressure he and Hampshire’s other opening bowler, Dimitri Mascarenhas, created lead to a serious situation that saw Surrey collapse to 32 for six, with Clarke claiming five. Newman was caught in the third over off to give Clarke his second wicket an Ramprakash followed in the next over, bowled first ball.
At four for three Surrey were in deep trouble, but this was to get worse when Ali Brown, Jonathan Batty and Azhar Mahmood all fell in the space of 17 runs. Schofield and Clarke went about salvaging some sort of score and both played magnificently to give the few Surrey supporters something to cheer about.
The pair ran well between the wicket and put the bad ball away to the boundary. They both went past fifty and managed to get Surrey up past 150 before Clarke was stumped off Shane Warne for a superb 55. Schofield manipulated the strike nicely to get as many runs from the remaining six overs as possible and eventually finished 74 not out with Surrey 181 all out.
With a below par score to defend, Surrey needed to get off to a good start and pick up early wickets. However this was not to happen as John Crawley and Michael Carberry played carefully to take the Hawks up past 50. Crawley was the more fluent of the pair and this was shown in the way that he went past his half century and just slower than a run-a-ball.
The following over however, Nayan Doshi got Surrey the breakthrough as Crawley was bowled coming down the wicket to hit over the top. Hampshire lost their second wicket shortly after as Michael Lumb top-edged a sweep to Mahmood and only 11 runs later Carberry was run out in a mix-up with Chris Benham.
Nevertheless after the three quick wickets, Sean Ervine and Benham steadied the Hawks' reply, to take their side up to 165 and 17 runs from victory. It seemed as though the pair would take Hampshire all the way until Nicholson and Clarke returned to pick up four wickets for 15 runs. Nonetheless, the home team eventually got to the finish line with ten balls to spare, guided by Shane Warne and Shaun Udal.
The way other results around the country had gone meant that Surrey, even if they had beaten Hampshire, would not have qualified for the Friends Provident Trophy semi finals.
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