Squad for next season

I have some sympathy with Alec Stewart as he tries to make the necessary changes to the squad for next season, though some of the problems are of his making.  

We will again be heavily hit by player absence (IPL, Internationals and the ugh Hundred),  but we cannot know precisely who will be involved.   This necessitates a large squad to cover the gaps (the replacements will obviously not be as good as the players they take over from).   This means we have several players in the squad who do not appear to be Surrey quality.   We also have players who are injury prone (most of them it often seems!).   We have a number of players who cannot happily play all  forms of cricket (Burns for instance is not a T20 player).   We also have too many bowlers who cannot bat causing us to have a long tail and I suspect reducing the appearances of Moriarty in the championship in an effort not to further elongate the tail.   Our fielding can be arthritic.   Quality overseas players tend to be available for short spells only.

We cannot afford an absentee captain and if it looks as though Burns will playing tests next summer I think it might be wise to change captain.  Is it to early  to give it to Smith?  Probably.

We certainly need to sign one (maybe two) opening batsmen and a quality pace bowler.   I would be quite happy to see Abbott return as he backs up impressive bowling with useful runs.

How do you see recruitment for next season?

in other words, unless we sign a few decent players we are royally f**ked.

with regards to tests next year, England play NZ in June and SA in August/September. As I guess the white ball stuff will be in between the 2 series, along with fact the ODIs take place in July between India & the SA, we can pretty much kiss goodbye to Burns playing Championship cricket (unless he loses his place in the Test team) so an opener is a must

If its going to be Alma (hopefully), Jacks, Smith, Foakes as 3-6, I assume Patel will be the other opener. As we are also losing Rikki I would like to think that an all-rounder would be coming in as well to help bolster the lower middle order, as we know we arent going to see SC in the near future

so for me at least 1 opener and an all rounder are a must, hopefully both of whom have some quality and the ability to play all season in all formats

Interestingly if this is the likely schedule where do the ECB fit in 2 or 3 CC4 day games in the peak summer as they have indicated? I don't see where they will fit in, and oh what about the India 5th Test?

Let's finish this season first if you don't mind.............................

I think we need to stop offering new contracts to players who are never available.  Surely it must be possible to draw up contracts that exclude players from disappearing to the IPL as long as we're frank and honest with them?  Annoyingly we could probably afford to pay these players more to stay in England but we're not allowed to because of the salary cap. Then we have to do a juggling act hiring cheap understudies to cover for multiple absences.  Is there really any point in keeping Roy and the Currans?  They just played a handful of T20 games at the start of the tournament, when our team looked unstoppable, but the moment they disappeared we could barely win another game.  They don't feel like Surrey players anymore. I'd rather give other players tie to establish a regular place for themselves for the long term.

When we had a very limited squad to choose from for the RL50, but a settled side, we finally punched our weight.  New signings like Steel and Worrall may seem underwhelming but at least they should always be available barring injury.  Roach and Abbott both did well as overseas player, so I hope we can get one of them again, or a combination of the two seeing as good overseas players like that are rarely available for an entire season.

The number of England fixtures is ridiculous these days.  Seven Tests and twelve 50/20 overs internationals during this season, then they're off to play more internationals overseas within a couple of weeks of the domestic season ending and there can't be a month without one of some description before the next English season starts.  England must play more fixtures per year than the counties do:  more than 14x first class fixtures, more than 8x 50 overs games, almost as many as the 14x T20s.  Then on the rare occasions there aren't any England fixtures the likes of Burns are withheld from playing for us.  The ECB now seems to run solely as a money making enterprise rather than as a proper governing body acting in its members best interests, prioritising maximum short-term profit over everything else. England matches no longer feel special to me because there are too many of them. I've largely lost interest and can barely remember the results of most of them, especially the ODI and T20Is. No wonder the EBCs new franchise teams are sponsored by junk food brands; they're serving up junk cricket on a mass scale and prioritising quantity over quality.

I agree. More is rarely better.  The schedule is absurd and our supposed governing body the wretched ECB is just a financial organisation which fails on every front to look after the interests of the game. Yes money is important as far as it goes, but not to bastardise the great game. I hope they get stung for the £30m loss on the 5th Test. In fact I'd rather they go bankrupt and cricket is rebuilt from the grass roots up. The management and standard of the game was never worse than it is now.
Yes, what's the point in keeping the Currans, Roy (3 stone overweight) and even Burns as captain. They never play for us bar the hit and gigle.

Burns played the first 9 Championship games and as a centrally contracted player has no Hundred opt-out, but yeah, sack him because he plays for England

No, but when he should be captaining Surrey for the last two games it's all becoming rather silly.

That is a total distortion of what I said RB. My view is that because of the slough of despond the club is currently in, they desperately need a captain who is going to be available to lead the side in nearly all the games. I would like to see Burns stay as Captain, but only if he is going to be there to do the job. It has to do with availability, not any knock at England.

Well for some odd reason Pope is the captain tomorrow although Jamie Smith is in the squad. How often will Pope ever play for Surrey? And Burns the Surrey captain "continues to be rested" for who knows what. But I'll tell you what, high time to dump central contracts.
But bugger all that crap, because the most important aspect of this match is that it's Rikki's last. Let's give him a great send off.

In terms of the Pope captaincy experiment, there may be a school of thought at Surrey that Ollie is considered less of a permanent fixture in the test team than Rory, which may explain why the ECB were more inclined to release him both for the last few 50-over games and for the last two championship matches. However, with both Jamie Smith and Ben Foakes back in the squad and presumably fit, I am rather surprised that Jamie was not given the opportunity to captain in this relatively meaningless match (freed of the wicket-keeping duties he had in the 50-over competition).

I'd like us to pick the strongest possible team tomorrow, to consign Glamorgan to the division two wooden spoon and give Rikki the send-off he deserves. So from the squad named I would go:

Amla
Patel
Smith
Pope
Jacks
Foakes
Clark
Clarke
Moriarty
Virdi
Topley

With dry weather, we should be able to play two specialist spinners which is our strongest (or least weak) bowling suit.

Jackers

Team spot on, though in a different order

Smith is down to open with Patel with Amla at 3.

Loss the toss and bowling

Sam Northeast has joined Glamorgan, but we definitely don’t need any batsman.