Roy and the bowlers do it again

Surrey remained top of the Friends Life t20 South Division with a 15-run win against London rivals Middlesex at The Oval. Left-arm spinner Ravi Patel took 4 for 18, in just his second game in the competition, but it was not enough as his batsmen failed to chase down 147 for 9.

Surrey, who have not tasted success in the Championship this season, have now won four Twenty20 games in a row since losing to Hampshire, the title-holders, in their opening match. They did not look like winning this one when Patel, holding his nerve admirably in front of a capacity crowd of 22,000, had twice taken two wickets in two balls to tear the heart out of Surrey's batting.

Patel stopped Surrey in their tracks after Jason Roy had shrugged off the early loss of Steve Davies, caught at mid-on off Ollie Rayner, to dominate a second-wicket stand of 61 in seven overs with Ricky Ponting. Ponting contributed only 10 of them off 12 balls before he holed out at deep extra cover off Patel but Roy had thrashed 52 off 33 balls when he fell leg before next ball.

Roy had thrilled the crowd by hitting three sixes, one of them a savage square cut to the longest boundary off Toby Roland-Jones, and five fours but none of the other Surrey batsmen could match his strokeplay on the slow, turning pitch.

Adam Voges had Vikram Solanki well caught on the cover boundary before Patel struck again in quick succession. He had Zafar Ansari superbly caught by Dawid Malan, running to his left on the long on boundary and then claimed Azhar Mahmood leg before. Voges picked up his second wicket when he had Glenn Maxwell caught at long-on to reduce Surrey to 104 for 7 but Zander de Bruyn kept the hosts in the game with an unbeaten 27 off 24 balls.

It proved to be far too many for Middlesex once they had lost three wickets for nine runs in three overs to slump to 37 for 3. Malan was caught behind driving extravagantly at Jade Dernbach, Joe Denly fell leg before to Mahmood and Voges popped up a simple return catch to Batty.

Adam Rossington made 24 and Neil Dexter 40 to give them some respectability but they were never in striking distance of their target.