At Chelmsford, Surrey won just their second Metro Bank One-Day Cup of the season thanks to a prudent century from Josh Blake. After 14 overs, at 53 for 3, the left-handed wicketkeeper-batter quadrupled his previous best score and remained unbeaten at 100 when Surrey finished at 306 for 4. Luc Benkenstein missed a chance at deep square leg, but the batsman made it through to 40.
With opener Ryan Patel (83 from 106 balls), Blake put on 98 in 20 overs for the fourth wicket. With Ollie Sykes (a hard-hitting 87 from 56 balls), Josh Blake put on an unbroken 155 in 16 explosive overs for the fifth wicket.
Essex never appeared likely to win the event twice after losing, meaning that neither team could advance to the knockout stages. With more than three overs remaining, frustrated Essex were 90 runs short of their target, with only captain Tom Westley (78 from 84 balls) providing much resistance.
After choosing to bat, Surrey got off to a poor start, lurching to 39-2 in the opening powerplay. The second half of the innings saw them pick up the pace, adding 192 in 25 overs, 117 of which came in the last 10 overs as Blake and Sykes blasted the struggling Essex bowlers to every part of the Cloud County Ground.
Although Patel had maintained composure in the beginning, his tenure was rather calm in comparison to what followed. With a cover drive off Tom Westley for his eighth four, he reached his fifty off 68 balls. After that, he removed Jamal Richards to the longest boundary on the pitch with No. 8, raising Surrey’s score to 100. But before creating the alliance with Blake, he had already lost three partners by then.
Having not held a white ball for a full year, Jamie Porter claimed two of those three wickets, firstly by bowling Dom Sibley shouldering arms to a delivery that swung in and removed a regular stump, and secondly by moving across to allow himself space and being leg before wicket to a straight shot. Playing down the wrong line in the interim, Shane Snater had Ben Geddes stuck in front of him.
Despite the Pavilion side boundary being fewer than 50 yards from the wicket, Essex defended it with determination, and Blake didn’t breach the pitch until the 33rd over with a reserve-sweep off Westley. The following over, however, proved to be Patel’s undoing as he uppitched Noah Thain to wide mid-off, where Westley made a diving catch.
After making his List A debut on Tuesday with eight runs, Sykes looked to the shorter side, where he twice deposited Thain for sixes in an over that cost fifteen. Before lofting Porter over the longer midwicket boundary, he added a third off Richards. Snater’s fifth over, midwicket, propelled the 19-year-old to a fifty from 34 balls.
Before a single in the last over got him to three figures from 100 balls, Blade was not letting up either. He lifted Snater over cover point for his lone six and added nine more fours.
Essex lost wickets at a regular rate, so their chase of 307 never really got underway. Conor McKerr was hit by Nick Browne, Feroze Khushi swung at James Taylor and was caught behind, and Robin Das was stumped by the observant Blake after Patel hit a legside shot that went wide.
With the floodlights now up and the run-rate increasing, Benkenstein pulled Nathan Barnwell to deep square leg. After failing to reverse-sweep Cameron Steel and going leg before wicket, Simon Fernandes teased McKerr from behind, and Westley’s two-hour innings came to an end when he cut Steel short in the middle of the over.
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Ben Allison hit the lone six of Essex’s innings with a career-best 32 not out, Ben Snater was bowled by Yousef Majid after three balls, Richards was stumped, and Steel took his fourth wicket for 50 when Porter hit a long ball to long off.
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