DERNBACH AND AFZAAL HOLD THEIR NERVE TO WRAP UP VICTORY FOR SURREY by Marcus Hook
Derbyshire Phantoms 218 (38.2 Overs) v Surrey Brown Caps 231-9 (40 Overs). Surrey Brown Caps win by 13 runs.

Jade Dernbach found an unlikely ally in Usman Afzaal as both recorded one-day career best bowling figures to wrap up Surrey's first victory in this season's Pro40 League. With 34 runs needed off the last five overs, Derbyshire, with five wickets in hand, appeared to have their noses in front; a fact underlined when Tom New flicked the first ball of the 36th over to fine leg for four. But then Graham Wagg was caught at short extra cover off Afzaal, Wayne White fell leg before to a full-pitched delivery from Dernbach, who also had Charl Langeveldt caught behind in the same over. With 24 wanted off three, the writing was on the wall when Afzaal took a stinging return catch off New in the 38th over.

Earlier, the visitors posted what seemed to be a below par 231-9 that owed much to James Benning's blistering 35 off 22 balls, which included eight fours, and half-centuries from Scott Newman and Mark Ramprakash, the latest, and perhaps final inductee into cricket's elite club of batsmen to have scored a hundred first-class hundreds.

The Brown Caps raced to 48 in the eighth over as Langeveldt, whose opening spell read 6-1-22-1, was the only Phantoms seamer to avoid being on the wrong end of Benning's onslaught. After the 25-year-old was caught at mid-on, Stewart Walters joined Newman in a second wicket partnership of 58. In the fifteenth over, Walters pulled White for four before Newman finished 22-year-old's solitary over with three successive boundaries.

Walters, who was making his first one-day appearance for over eleven months, was lbw to Wagg in the 18th over. In the 19th, Afzaal found himself at the same end as Newman. When Newman went three overs later, bowled by his former Surrey team-mate Nayan Doshi for a 63-ball 51, it was 133-4. Ramprakash - who hit sixes off Doshi in the 28th over, Greg Smith in the 33rd over and Langeveldt in the 38th over - also lost Matthew Spriegel, attempting to cut Smith's off-spin, and Jonathan Batty, who was also caught behind, to an inside edge off Ian Hunter.

The home side did not begin to assert themselves until Wavell Hinds replaced Dan Birch, who lost his leg stump after going down the pitch to Dernbach, in the sixth over. Hinds hit Matt Nicholson out of the attack with fours to long-on and mid-wicket and in the next over opened the face of the bat to Dernbach and ran the 22-year-old down to third man boundary.

Hinds had his middle stump plucked out by Dernbach in the eighth over, but then Chris Rogers and Rikki Clarke combined for what appeared to be a decisive third wicket stand of 95 in eighteen overs. Clarke hit 44 off 49 balls, but then the game turned again when he was stumped charging Afzaal and Rogers fell to Spriegel in the very next over for 53 from deliveries.

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