After a run of eight Second Eleven Championship games Surrey seconds turned their attention this week to the one-day version of the game – the Second Eleven Trophy. The first game of this year’s tournament, against Hampshire, was played at Sutton on a dusty track which seemed to have been under-watered.

Stewart Walters won the toss for Surrey and chose to bat first. Rory Hamilton-Brown was caught at slip and Walters and Richard Clinton engaged in a short stand that was characterised by some optimistic running between the wickets and culminated in Clinton being run out for 26. Walters (20) followed soon after to a controversial catch. None of the Surrey batsmen really got going and Gary Wilson had to hold the innings together with a fighting 36 from 85 balls. Surrey stumbled to 117 for six but the total was pushed to respectability thanks to Jason Roy of the Academy who was making his second eleven debut. In a feisty knock he hit three sixes and three fours and was unlucky to be out, lbw, two runs shy of a deserved half-century. His 48 had come from 33 balls and, largely due to his innings the Surrey score at the close of the fifty overs was 199 for nine. Liam Dawson was the pick of the Hampshire bowlers with a tidy spell of one for 17 from his ten overs.

Surrey’s total appeared to be a low one to defend especially with Dawson (34) and Sean Ervine (38) putting on 76 for the second wicket. Gradually the Surrey spinners, Steven Smith, Rory Hamilton-Brown and Simon King clawed back control of the game. The turning point came in the thirty-third over when Burrows was caught behind by Wilson off the bowling of King and the next ball bowler and keeper combined to run out Riazuddin. Hampshire were then on 146 for seven and, as the spinners tightened their grip, were soon on 167 for nine. The last pair, Mitchell Stokes and Billy Taylor then held Surrey up for half an hour in the third highest stand of the innings, creeping ever closer to the required total. During this time there was further incident when Jade Dernbach was taken off by the Umpires for bowling a second beamer, an intended yorker which sadly went wrong. Eventually with the score on 196, Stokes, who had battled over an hour for his 35, hit a high ball towards mid-wicket where a grateful Walters snapped up a nail-biting catch to give Surrey victory by three runs.

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