County cricket: T20 Blast quarter-finalists settled amid controversy

Rory Burns has got far more right than wrong as Surrey captain, but he wrote an entry on the shorter side of the ledger with his key decisions in last week’s match at the Oval. With his team 445-5 at the end of day one, he could have declared after Sam Curran bazballed his way to a maiden century off 64 deliveries, the score 544-5. He chose to bat on for 19 more overs, piling up 673-7 declared. Whether one ever needs more than 552 in the first dig of a four-day match is moot – 670+ is just indulgence.

To their credit, Kent dug in, centurion Daniel Bell-Drummond and captain Jack Leaning each occupying the crease for nearly four hours. But the visitors’ deficit of 342 runs was less important than the fact that they had chewed up 103 overs, whereupon Burns (inevitably after his delayed declaration) invited Kent to have another go and his bowlers to strap on their boots for four more sessions in the field.

To their credit, Kent ignored the scoreboard pressure, with Bell-Drummond tucking in for another ton, and stumps were pulled with him still at the crease, his team five down and 19 runs to the good. In mitigation, Surrey can point to Curran (still not fully fit) bowling only 24 of the 220 overs sent down and to the fact that they were missing (for various reasons) Jamie Overton, Reece Topley, Jordan Clark and Tom Curran. But they also failed to select Amar Virdi or Dan Moriarty (who, in July last year, were in the XI alongside Ravichandran Ashwin), so that rather limits the dimensions of the violin.

That said, even when it’s bad, it’s still good for the Londoners in 2022. They have Essex, specifically Simon Harmer, to thank for that, as second-place Hampshire went down to a tight defeat at Chelmsford, leaving them 16