With four wickets for 26, Tom Lawes was Surrey’s hero on the final day as they bowled out Essex for 215 to win by 145 runs over their closest opponents at the Kia Oval and extend their advantage at the top of the Vitality County Championship standings.
Dean Elgar made a characteristically resolute sixty-five, but Surrey’s faster bowlers were unrelenting once the morning showers passed. Tyro Lawes, a 21-year-old, took two wickets in as many balls at first, then came back after tea to shatter further Essex resistance from Paul Walter and Michael Pepper.
With 25.5 overs remaining, Surrey clinched its 20-point victory—their sixth in nine Division One games this season—and is still on track to win three consecutive championships. Jordan Clark ended with three for 56 and Dan Worrall with two for 71 to help Lawes.
Runner-up Rightfully so, Essex will be upset that they were forced to play a crucial match at the top of the table with just 10 players because Jordan Cox was absent for much the whole game after reporting sick early on the first day. Since then, Cox has undergone surgery to remove his appendix; nonetheless, ECB rules only permit substitutes for those who have suffered concussions.
Cox’s complete participation might not have mattered much, especially on a well-grassed field that supported the seamers all game long, but the 23-year-old led Essex’s championship batting averages going into the game with 763 runs at 69.36. Not only was his sickness a terrible blow, but Surrey also had to take just 18 wickets altogether instead of 20 since they were unable to find another batter to replace him.
After a two-hour rain delay early in the day, Essex resumed their second innings on 21 for two. Rather than attempting to chase down an unlikely 361-run victory target, their sole goal would have been to survive.
Elgar had caught Worrall three times in an over for offside fours, and Westley had gracefully off-driven Clark for four before flicking Worrall away for further boundaries to fine leg and then off his pads to square leg.
However, Lawes replaced Worrall at the Vauxhall End with his second ball, and he removed both Westley and Matt Critchley in his second over after Dom Sibley dropped Elgar at second slip on 36.
Perfectly-pitched outswingers took the edge off of both Westley and Critchley’s forward defensive batsmen, and each time Ben Foakes dove to his right to make superb catches, Essex found themselves 86 for four, with Lawes completing a hat-trick.
He was denied a hat-trick until the first delivery of his third over, when Elgar clipped a full ball to deep mid wicket for three runs to bring his half-century to an end.
Nevertheless, Lawes’ two-for-18 six-over spell had severely harmed Essex’s chances of batting out the day for a draw, and it appeared that the visitors’ day was almost over when Worrall came back to take Lawes’ place in the attack and persuaded Elgar to hook a short ball straight into the hands of deep mid wicket.
A ground record for a Surrey championship fixture this century, 13,706 people attended the game overall, helped significantly by the 6,300 who came to support the club’s Festival of Red Ball Cricket initiative on day one, when the Oval concourses were offering a wide variety of family-friendly activities.
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