By Christopher Martin-Jenkins at the Oval
First day of four: Surrey 314-9 v Kent
SAQLAIN MUSHTAQ and Ian Salisbury must have felt like children on Christmas morning yesterday. Not only were they presented with their county caps - proper caps, chocolate brown with the Prince of Wales feathers, just as they were in Laker and Lock's day - but also with a pitch which the great spinning partnership of the 1950s would have recognised as normal.
Salisbury further enhanced that bulging stocking feeling by making his highest score since moving to the Oval, an important innings played when Kent were bowling themselves back into the match. He will have every chance today to make this even more a match to remember.
The pitch turned on the first day because it has already had three days cricket on it in the last week, in the Texaco Trophy and the Benson and Hedges Cup. Surrey said that the pitch originally prepared for this game was damp at one end. That they felt themselves to have the better pair of spinners, however, may not have been entirely irrelevant.
The ball should be turning square by tomorrow. Carl Hooper's first six-wicket analysis for Kent has given them a chance of equalling Surrey's first-innings score, a possibility which seemed remote when Alec Stewart and Mark Butcher were putting on 142 for the first wicket, but this was a very important toss for the championship leaders to win, especially against a side likely to be among their most serious rivals.
Stewart's performance was exactly what he, his county and his country required. He was getting into the right position around his off stump again and, having seen off the new ball - given to Dean Headley and a tentative Martin McCague - he produced an exhibition of imperious strokeplay against the unfortunate Min Patel, making 80 off 101 balls before lunch, with three sixes and eight fours.
Butcher played the eye-catching strokes at first, his batting looking close to its best again against the quick stuff, but less assured once Patel and Hooper began their long stints. His partner began his measured assault by driving Patel back over his head for six twice in succession and he had explored various other parts of the Oval's extremities when, in the space of three more balls, he drove him one bounce over mid-off into the wall which protects the lower reaches of the Bedser Stand, then danced out again to smite another straight six.
Patel's revenge was therefore like a taste of honey, albeit belated. Stewart edged him to slip in the second over after lunch, pushing towards an on-side gap. It was the cue for Hooper, with a ball which looked shorter and slower than it was, to dispose of Butcher as he aimed a back-foot force, Steve Marsh taking a high-class catch off the bottom edge.
Marsh kept well all afternoon and kept faith with his spinners, too. Graham Thorpe briefly looked in fine form, following a late cut off Hooper with a classy on-drive off Patel, but when he cut a ball which turned and bounced to backward point and Ali Brown was bowled second ball, cutting against the spin, Surrey were in danger of squandering their advantage.
Adam Hollioake played well but his brother had already almost perished to a leg-side heave when another produced only a return catch for Hooper off the toe of the bat. The captain's departure, swinging toward square leg rather than aiming straighter, left Surrey at only 212 for six, but Salisbury and Jonathan Batty set out towards the 300 with batting of better judgment.
Batty was adjudged to have edged a sweep and both Saqlain and Alex Tudor - though the young giant showed he can bat - were leg-before to Headley with the new ball. But Salisbury continued to show what a natural cricketer he is.
Day 2: Salisbury turns up trumps for Surrey
By Rob Steen at the Oval
THE ghosts of Laker and Lock may still stroll these parts with a forbidding tread, but Ian Salisbury and Saqlain Mushtaq are doing their level best to perform an exorcism. Thanks in equal measure to an obliging, if far from spiteful pitch, half a dozen slip catches from Graham Thorpe - dicky disc and all - and their own skilful use of the conditions, the Surrey spin twins made Kent follow on with an ease bordering on the comical.
Not that they had it all their own way. Four bowlers in this match will be awaiting news of the selectors' deliberations with more than passing interest - Mark Ealham, Dean Headley, Ian Salisbury and Ben Hollioake - but the first to make any impact was Martin Bicknell, a man with every reason to ponder what might have been.
In a superb spell with the new ball, he reduced the Kent openers to strokeless compliance, then sent back David Fulton and Carl Hooper in the space of four balls, both pinned in front by fullish in-slanters. All of which heightened the suspicion that, in bowling terms, we were watching the great lost talent of his generation.
Two Tests in the 1993 Ashes series have been Bicknell's lot to date, and perceived wisdom has it that he lacks the extra yard of pace that turns county conquistadors into international inquisitors. One still can't help but feel that overuse early in his career - he once sent down 250 overs by the end of May - may have taken a substantial toll. Even for an Englishman, 29 is no age to be harbouring visions of a Test recall, but stranger things have happened.
Bicknell and Alex Tudor, who had disposed of Robert Key by dint of Thorpe's smart low grab, had been the first seamers in the match to remove a specialist batsman, but their job was now done. Saqlain replaced Tudor in the 14th over while Salisbury, fresh from an impressive unbeaten half century that swelled the Surrey total to 342, succeeded Bicknell in the 17th, whereupon the stutter became a lurch.
Salisbury's initial offering, a leg-side full toss, was his worst by a street. In his 12 overs, he yielded 13 runs and just the solitary boundary, evincing a measure of control that would astonish those who remember him as a luxury item prone to permitting at least one free hit per over. Much has been made of Terry Jenner's influence, and rightly so. The arm is lower than hitherto, enabling the ball to be pushed through more briskly, yet that tantalising loop remains.
Matthew Fleming and Ealham were both lured into indiscreet drives, Trevor Ward drawn forward and beaten off the pitch. Better still was the delivery that turned right angles behind Alan Wells's legs and missed the stumps by the proverbial coat of varnish.
Saqlain, too, whirled away with consummate skill and verve, trapping Wells, the only man who looked capable of mounting any protracted resistance, then inducing edges from Steve Marsh and Min Patel. Thorpe saved his best for the Kent captain, springing far to his right in a manner that would have had Wayne Morton, the England physio, in a state of near-apoplexy.
As Kent careered towards 86 all out, the lowest first-class total of the summer, shedding their last seven wickets for 25 in 15 overs after lunch, how fitting that Thorpe should have the final say, whisking off the bails after negotiations between Martin McCague and Dean Headley had broken down. While this may have robbed Thorpe of the opportunity to match the first-class record - Micky Stewart (1957) and Tony Brown (1966) have both claimed seven catches in an innings - the prospect of a two-day victory will have served as compensation.
Day 3: Saqlain and Salisbury spin their tale of woe
By Christopher Martin-Jenkins at the Oval
Surrey (342) bt Kent (86 & 226) by an innings and 30 runs
``GOOD morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the third day of this Britannic Assurance County Championship match against Kent,'' said Anne Bickerstaff, Surrey's loyal public address announcer 15 minutes before the start of play yesterday. But the lunch which she then went on to recommend in the Bedser Lounge remained uneaten.
The third day's play of this so-called four-day match lasted for six overs and four balls. The delight which the Surrey players must have felt at crushing one of their most serious rivals for the championship by an innings and 30 runs cannot entirely have been shared by their treasurer.
Had the game not been as good as finished in two days, he would have expected a crowd at least equal to the 2,000 who were present on Saturday, when Kent were being bowled out by Saqlain Mushtaq and Ian Salisbury for 86.
A relevant, if somewhat tendentious recent survey by two researchers at Sheffield University has concluded that the biggest difference between Australian and English cricket - and therefore of their widely different performances in Test cricket over the last 10 years - is that the Australians have more time to prepare for big matches and that their four-day games generally do go the full distance.
More pitches like this will only widen the gap in that respect. But wait a moment. It is a question of technique, too, and Kent's was found to be woefully inadequate against two international spinners on a pitch which turned no more nor less than many before it: very many, indeed, in the days of uncovered pitches. Carl Hooper alone, in making 94 on Saturday when Kent followed on, had the class and know-how to bat freely.
No one else read Salisbury's googly; no one else understood Saqlain's leg-break, bowled from the front of the hand in much the same way as the ball which Sonny Ramadhin used to confuse all-comers, at least before the Edgbaston Test of 1957. It is because he genuinely spins it both ways, let alone drifts it in the air, that Saqlain is at least the equal of the best wrist spinners in contemporary international cricket.
The umpires, Barry Dudleston and Roy Palmer, will give this pitch low marks but they were not obliged to report it with a view to any official investigation because 15 wickets did not fall on the first day, and they will not do so for the equally good reason that it was never dangerous.
It depends on your point of view, of course, but the poor technique against spin bowling, which is by no means a Kent exclusive, is every bit as much a matter for concern as Surrey's producing a pitch to suit their spinners.
Adam Hollioake was characteristically honest about it. ``It's very easy to criticise,'' he said, ``but the other wickets got wet while we were playing against Lancashire last week. Obviously we're not going to produce a wicket which will suit the seamers when we've got two of the best spinners in the world. We're going to produce a wicket to suit them. That's home advantage.''
Steve Marsh admitted that Kent should not have been bowled out for 86 but felt that the side who won the toss were probably going to win the match. ``That's not ideal when it's supposed to be a four-day game. It might have been over in a day and three-quarters had Carl Hooper not played so well.''
The other important point, of course, is that Saqlain and Salisbury did not waste their opportunity. Saqlain completed match figures of seven for 118 by bowling Dean Headley, forward to a big off-break, and Martin McCague skied to mid-on after some defiant blows.
Salisbury can be pleased not just with his match figures of six for 88 but also a valuable 56 not out. He looks so much less frenetic in his approach to the crease than he was, and his action as he delivers is more relaxed as a result, without any loss of the spin which takes wickets.
Only when Hooper, and briefly yesterday McCague and Min Patel, got after him was there a tendency to drop the ball short. There is something still to work on there before the selectors recall him, but that is now only a matter of time.
Surrey's success enhanced their lead in the championship table, but they say farewell to the three Test players at the top of their batting order for the game against Worcestershire and the key to the title will be the performance of their reserves. Martin Bicknell, Alex Tudor, Saqlain, Salisbury and a brace of Hollioakes is currently the best attack in county cricket.