TAYLOR LEADS FROM THE FRONT by Marcus Hook
Surrey 2-1 v Gloucestershire 368

Thanks to Chris Taylor’s 177 off 256 balls the good run in the County Championship currently being enjoyed by Gloucestershire looks set to continue. The 27-year-old’s second hundred of the season was the glue that held his side’s first innings together yesterday following an indifferent start after being put in by Surrey at The Oval.

Phlegmatic throughout his six-hour stay at the crease, during which time he gave just one chance, when 31, Taylor cut and steered the ball off the back foot through the off-side and threw in the occasional on drive and sweep for good measure. The Gloucestershire captain also figured in two three-figure partnerships, finding useful allies at crucial times in Alex Gidman and James Averis.

If that was not enough misery for the home side, their fitness worries deepened when Jimmy Ormond limped off with an injury to his right knee, soon after capturing his 300th championship wicket, and Adam Hollioake, opening for the first time in his career, was narrowly run out for a duck in the last over of the day.

Earlier, however, the visitors struggled, losing Craig Spearman and Matt Windows inside four overs. Both were leg before to Ormond, who got the new ball to move prodigiously through the air and appeared, initially, to be revitalised after his fortnight’s break. The Oval outfit’s workhorse seamer almost accounted for Philip Weston – who was dropped by Jonathan Batty when the catch had Alistair Brown’s name on it – yet still had a hand in the left-hander’s downfall by pulling off an acrobatic catch at mid-off three overs later.

Taylor and Gidman then put on 131 in twenty-nine overs for the fourth wicket. The latter posted his half-century shortly after lunch off 65 balls. But having just taken a couple of boundaries off Tim Murtagh, the 22-year-old all-rounder was bamboozled by one that Martin Bicknell managed to hold up. The next over saw Shoaib Malik give Hollioake catching practice at third slip. The Pakistani was soon joined in the dressing room by Steve Adshed, who was brilliantly taken just off the turf in front of first slip.

Chris Taylor reached the seventh first-class hundred of his career in 147 deliveries with his nineteenth boundary, which was crashed through cover, but then Ian Fisher, flashing hard, was caught above third slip’s head. That brought James Averis to the wicket and Surrey had to endure a further 37 overs without making a breakthrough.

Taylor and Averis added 121 for the eighth wicket, beating Clifford Monks and Victor Hopkins’s record of 111 versus Surrey, at Bristol in 1937. Averis posted the record stand and his personal best by despatching Murtagh to the cover boundary in the 94th over.

The 22-year-old seamer gained his revenge, however, by wrapping up the innings with three wickets in five balls, taking him past 50 first-class wickets and denying Averis the opportunity of a maiden half-century. Crucially, it also left the Surrey openers four overs to negotiate at the end, which they were three balls away from doing when Hollioake tried to steal a quick single to cover from where the man of the day Chris Taylor scored a direct hit at the bowler’s end.

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