It’s “mission impossible” for Yorkshire CCC as champions Surrey cruise to victory
ON the eve of the match at the Kia Oval, Jonny Bairstow was among the great and the good who attended the UK premiere of the new Tom Cruise film “Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning” in London’s Leicester Square.
Sadly for the Yorkshire captain and his players, there was no such movie-type drama at the cricket, where Yorkshire’s own “mission impossible” proved exactly that as they lost by an innings to champions Surrey.
A third defeat in six County Championship games, to go with a win over bottom club Worcestershire and two draws, leaves Yorkshire in the second and final relegation position.
A lot can happen in the remaining eight games – Yorkshire were winless in their first seven last year but still got promoted – but there is plenty for players and coaches to ponder, not least a mis-firing batting unit, the balance of the team, and yet more unsuccessful forays into the overseas market.
It would perhaps have needed Tom Cruise to have walked down the Oval steps with bat in hand – backed by a multi-million pound budget and sundry special effects – let alone Bairstow for Yorkshire to have extricated themselves from the hole that they inhabited at the start of day four.
The visitors were 185-6 in their second innings, still 72 runs short of leaving a chase, with Bairstow (their last realistic hope) unbeaten on 64, and Matty Revis on three.
The day was initially overcast, with just a smattering of spectators, the match so well-attended overall that the aggregate crowd of 14,853 was a record for a Championship game at the Oval this century.
Surrey’s record at the venue is truly something; they have suffered only three Championship defeats there since 2014, and win number 33 (to go with 26 draws) was always likely to be a formality unless Bairstow, Tom Cruise-like, could do something incredible.
The captain, having reached his half-century from just 39 balls the previous evening, was circumspect to start with, taking 16 balls to get off the mark on day four before striking his first boundary, a pull off Nathan Smith.
Neither batsman looked especially troubled, despite a probing start by Smith and Matty Fisher, the sight of the latter bowling for Surrey after his close-season move from Headingley still strange to say the least, a bit like watching Mo Salah in action for Everton in the Merseyside derby, perhaps, or Pep Guardiola patrolling the touchline as manager of Manchester United.
Fisher, who debuted for Yorkshire as a 15-year-old in 2013, when he became the youngest post-war county cricketer, has, by all accounts, been bowling much better this season than his stats would suggest – eight Championship wickets at an average of 62.75.
It was his brilliant late in-swinger to bowl James Wharton on the third evening that effectively settled matters, following a gutsy fightback by Wharton and Bairstow that had pruned the deficit to 90 with seven wickets left, a dismissal for which Wharton later reproved himself – albeit harshly so.
After Fisher and Smith got a bit of shape with the old ball on the fourth morning, it was the Surrey change bowlers who finished the job.
Revis was the first to fall, Tom Lawes trapping him leg-before after 45 minutes with one that slanted in to leave Yorkshire 208-7, 49 adrift.
Then, in the penultimate over before the second new ball, Ryan Patel claimed the all-important scalp of Bairstow with his lesser-spotted medium-pace, the batsman’s off stump flattened as he attempted to drive through mid-on.
The first over with that new ball then accounted for Ben Coad, who chopped on to Jordan Clark as he played outside off stump, Clark finishing things off when Jordan Thompson skied to Smith at deep mid-on.
It was all over not long after midday as Surrey moved up to second in the table, hot on the heels of Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire’s next opponents at Headingley from Friday.
Yorkshire, meanwhile, have not made the start that they expected of themselves, although it is interesting to note that they are exactly where every major bookmaker predicted they would finish (do these people ever get anything wrong?)
From Yorkshire’s perspective, let’s hope so, with one or two positives, at least, to take from the game.
Bairstow, around whom rumours have swirled of a quick trip to the rescheduled IPL knockouts, top-scored in both innings with 89 and 77, his fourth and fifth half-centuries in this season’s competition, and his third in succession.
Wharton has now hit three fifties in his last four innings, and four in total, the tall right-hander keen to turn such contributions into more three-figure offerings.
And George Hill, who cannot buy a run at the minute, is still taking wickets for fun, another five here to give him 27 for the campaign at just 14.66, “the final reckoning” for Yorkshire still some way hence.