Marcus Hook’s reflection on Surrey’s County Championship ‘three-peat’ – and why target is now to become even more four-midable

BY MARCUS HOOK

After lifting the County Championship trophy for the third time in as many years, Rory Burns rated this summer’s defence of Surrey’s crown as the toughest.

Unlike Yorkshire – the last county to achieve a red-ball ‘three-peat’ in 1968 – team selection was a constant juggling act due to the volume of international cricket and the proliferation of T20 tournaments around the world.

For the same reason, the availability of overseas stars was also a hindrance. Even though counties have the option of fielding two, this year’s Championship saw Surrey’s overseas representatives limited to just 16 appearances.

“This one has probably been the most difficult,” said Burns, who has now skippered the Oval outfit to four championship titles, having also won it in 2018. “Within our squad we have got a lot of moving parts, a lot of guys going out playing for England, which is brilliant. It is one of the challenges of being Surrey.

“I’m very proud of what this group of players has achieved over the last few years. To win it once is a very hard thing to do, to win it three times in a row is incredibly impressive and I’m very proud of them.”

Key to Surrey’s success was their home form – six victories, all of them convincing, out of seven. The only team to resist was Somerset, who dug in long enough in April to leave their hosts needing 209 in 19 overs on the final evening.

Somerset won the return fixture at Taunton, where Surrey’s lack of a specialist spinner revealed a chink in their armour – as it had done away to Hampshire – to blow the title race wide open with two matches to go.

But Somerset’s surprise defeat to Lancashire next up handed the title to the South Londoners, who bounced back to defeat Durham by 10 wickets.

“The target is on our back, to the extent that sides change the conditions of how they play us,” said Burns. “To win four titles in a row will be difficult, but there is no reason why we can’t do it.

“The motivation at the start of every season is when you’ve done it once you want to do it again. There is that pride in defending it. We’ve dressed it up in different ways in trying to attack it, but we’ll sit on three in a row for a little bit and we’ll think about next year in due course.”

It all started at a wet Old Trafford where leg-spinner Cameron Steel took a career best 5-25. Steel then returned figures of 4-50 and 5-96 against Somerset at The Oval. But after the Kookaburra ball was put away in favour of the Dukes, with which Surrey’s seam attack excelled, Steel’s form fell away.

The frustration of time running out against Somerset was followed by four successive victories. Jordan Clark’s unbeaten 106 off 102 balls set-up an innings win over Hampshire at The Oval, likewise

Jamie Smith’s 155 against Warwickshire who, again, had no answer to Kemar Roach, who took 6-46 in the Bears’ second dig.

Dan Worrall, who became the first bowler since Morne Morkel in 2018 to bag more than 50 Championship wickets in a season for Surrey, proved irresistible at home to Worcestershire with figures of 6-22 and 4-35.

Worrall finished the summer with 52 Championship victims at just 16.15 runs apiece, with fellow seamer Clark taking 38 at 25.97.

Surrey topped the South Group in the T20 Blast. The highlight of the round-robin phase was beating Glamorgan with 11 overs to spare, though not before Smith had smashed 87 off 38 balls (including seven sixes) against Somerset and Sean Abbott had taken 5-18 against Middlesex.

Sam Curran provided the icing on the cake by hitting an unbeaten 102 off 58 balls against Hampshire.

Not for the first time, the South Londoners’ One-Day Cup campaign was undermined by the number of Surrey players involved in The Hundred.

Nevertheless, Ryan Patel and Dominic Sibley starred with the bat and the victory over Essex at Chelmsford provided a glimpse of the future with Josh Blake (100 not out) and 19-year-old Ollie Sykes (87 not out) sharing a fifth-wicket stand of 155 in 17 overs.

It was during the 50-over competition that the cricket world was rocked by the tragic passing of the former Surrey and England batter Graham Thorpe at the age of 55, following a long battle with depression. A mural of Thorpe now adorns the wall outside The Oval and there are plans for a foundation to be set up in his name.

When the County Championship resumed at Worcester, at the end of June, Dan Lawrence hit five sixes in an over en route to 175. Victory by an innings and five runs was followed by a 145-run home success over Essex, where Smith marked his England call-up with knocks of 100 and 70.

Smith, along with fast bowler Gus Atkinson, became the latest in a growing line of England players whose journey started at Surrey age group level, through the club’s academy and into their first team.

In this summer’s six home Test matches Smith scored 487 runs in 10 innings, while Atkinson took 34 wickets at an average of 20.17, in addition to recording a career best 118 against Sri Lanka at Lord’s.

Rory Burns’ 227 set-up an innings and 63-run win over Lancashire at The Oval. Burns – who finished the championship campaign with 1,073 runs at an average of 53.65 – followed up with 161 in the draw with Notts at Trent Bridge.

Sibley, like his skipper, also hit three Championship centuries at the top of the order – at home to Somerset, in the away win over Kent and in the final game of the season against Essex – scoring 832 runs at an average of 43.78.

After brushing Durham aside in the quarter-finals of the Blast, Somerset once again put paid to Surrey’s hopes of a first domestic T20 title since 2003 at the semi-final stage.
Despite starting the contest confidently with bat as well as ball, the South Londoners lost to the Cidermen for the second time in the space of 48 hours, having failed to safely negotiate the final day of their four-day clash at Taunton.

The absence of Will Jacks, Ollie Pope and Smith during the championship run-in, on top of wicketkeeper Ben Foakes’ lack of production with the bat, never proved an issue thanks to Patel adding 134 against Durham to the 107 he had made against Essex, in a match that Burns looks back on as being pivotal.

“Beating Essex at home was key,” said Burns. “At the start of the year, you try and pick who your main rivals might be, and we knew Essex were a very good team.

“Beating them at home at the midway-ish point of the season was a big lift and gave us quite a big buffer at that stage.

“That was one of the big ones, as was getting over the line against Durham – particularly after coming back from a poor performance, or rather a mad hour at the end of that Somerset game.”

As is so often the case in sport, Surrey’s continued dominance of the red-ball game was initiated at the top of the show – by the standards set by director of cricket Alec Stewart and head coach Gareth Batty.

Batty, whose passion makes him the domestic game’s pre-eminent enabler, will be back in 2025 to see if the South Londoners can become the first side, since Surrey in the 1950s, to win the County Championship four times in a row.

Stewart, however, will be standing down as the club’s director of cricket, after 11 years in the role.

“Stewie might have lost the title [of director of cricket], but he’s always going to be there in the background, I imagine, helping us every way he can,” said Rory Burns.

“He’s a true Surrey man and he’s still the gaffer.”