Recent Match Report – Surrey vs Lancashire 2023

Lancashire291 (Jennings 76, de Grandhomme 67* Abbott 5-50) and 247 for 3 (Bohannon 108, Croft 56*) drew with Surrey 442 (Steel 141*, Foakes 76, Smith 54) and 292 for 6 (Foakes 103*; Parkinson 5-120)

Towards the end of the Amazon Prime video Phoenix from the Ashes Sam Mendes risks challenging the film’s central figure, Ben Stokes, with a famous quotation from Albert Camus: “A man’s work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover, though the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” The experiment is not a success. “Dunno what you’re on about, mate,” says England’s Test captain.

It has not always been so. There was a time when Bohannon called his morning drive to Emirates Old Trafford “going to work” and when his cricket seemed inhibited by the intensity with which he played it. Some sessions with a sports psychologist followed and in time he was able to understand that dismissals were batting’s inevitable occupational hazards. That, of course, is not the same as tolerating the sort of sloppy cricket that led to his getting out in the first innings of this game; it is merely an acceptance of one of the truths of his chosen trade. It enables a cricketer to relax, to see his life in clearer proportion.

Eventually, the bowlers became tired and were replaced by part-time spinners. Bohannon came in to tea on 85 and Surrey’s scrap of hope now rested on the new ball. Before that could be taken, however, Rory Burns had to find somebody to send down a few “filler” overs and so absolutely nothing was more out of keeping with the temper of Bohannon’s innings than the ease with which he stroked Ollie Pope’s fifth ball in first-class cricket to the off-side boundary, thus reaching his century off 173 balls with his 14th four. To be truthful, though, you can disregard some statistics; it was Bohannon’s 173-run stand for the third wicket with Croft that mattered. As for Pope, his one over may already be a cricket society quiz question

Having made 108, Bohannon opted not to play a ball from Dan Worrall that knocked out his off stump. It was a misjudgement and, although by no means his first, it barely mattered. Less than four overs later, the players were shaking hands with Croft taking quiet comfort from his third-fiddle innings of 56 not out. At that point, it was useful to recall that Surrey had dominated the first three days of this game and also that the pitch on which it had been played was as dry and true as any of Old Trafford’s April wickets in recent memory.

And it was even more useful, perhaps, to remember the first session of this match, when the intensity of the cricket had offered a graphic rebuttal to those who deride the domestic game. For three quarters of an hour Luke Wells and Keaton Jennings resisted the accuracy of Surrey’s high-quality seamers with all the technical resources at their disposal. Nothing happened to disturb the calm of Easter Sunday morning apart from Wells clipping Worrall over square leg for six.

Then both openers were winkled out in the space of seven balls. First Jennings, who had been cramped for room by Ben Foakes standing up and bowled off his pads by Jordan Clark in the first innings, was dismissed by the same combination when he played an indeterminate cut but only inside-edged the ball into his middle stump. They are dismissals that video-analysts around the circuit will be studying. Then Wells, having played capably for his 45 runs, pulled Kemar Roach straight to Worrall at long leg and, as ever with this batsman, felt the sins of the world on shoulders that were now hunched over his bat. Eventually the Lancashire opener hauled himself off the ground – but it took a while.

And Surrey could have enjoyed further success. When he had made two, Bohannon nicked Abbott to slip where Pope put the two-handed chance down. The ball travelled quickly and it was a tough opportunity but one allowed oneself the thought that Easter Sunday morning was hardly the most apt time for any Pope to drop a bollock.

Bohannon put the escape away and was soon enjoying the first of his many chats with Croft. As it happens, this was his 26th birthday and there were worse ways to celebrate it than batting with a mate and making a hundred. The achievement will have mattered to him – but not too much. Four years ago success and failure were everything. But then Josh was so much older then; he’s younger than that now.