Tudor leads Surrey's survival bid

Worcestershire 281 for 8 (Moore 76, Tudor 4-61) trail Surrey 375 (Ramprakash 130) by 94 runs
Scorecard

If Surrey are relegated, will the public mourn the decline of a side that played exhilarating cricket and finished in the top five every season for the past six years, or rejoice at the fall of English cricket's dominant force? If Surrey's footballing equivalent, Manchester United, were to be dumped from the Premiership at the end of the forthcoming campaign, it would send many happy fans to bed with smiles on their faces. But the country's attitude to Surrey is less clear, and they may yet escape finding out if they push home the advantage their bowlers gained on the second day at The Brit Oval.

Worcestershire closed on 281 for 8, 94 runs adrift of Surrey's first-innings 375. It's a winning position for Surrey, and a position they must take advantage of. They have four more games to save themselves, and their coach, Steve Rixon, said before this contest that they needed to win three of their remaining fixtures, all of which are against quality sides also somehow caught up in the fight against relegation - two against Lancashire, and one apiece against Kent and Sussex. Rixon's statement puts pressure on Surrey, who have been strangely incapable of coping with the slightest whiff of a problem. They have gone from a team which, like the Australians, seemed to take a perverse pleasure from seeing opponents squirm, to a team who don't want to upset anyone. From Margaret Thatcher to Thora Hird.

This time, however, they are responding well. Alex Tudor, in his first start of the season, has probably been unaffected by Surrey's dire form, because he has been so wrapped up in his long road back from injury. If he had something to prove, he didn't let himself down. It was his devastating spell in the afternoon that accounted for three Worcestershire batsmen, and began to make Surrey believe that Division Two is no place for them.

At 159 for 1, with Stephen Moore back in the dressing-room retired hurt and Stephen Peters the only loss after a swaggering 75-ball 74, Surrey were on the ropes, and several of their players might have spent the tea break swapping CVs with the builders in charge of modernising the Vauxhall end of the ground. But Tudor ripped out Graeme Hick, Vikram Solanki and Andrew Hall for the addition of only eight runs. Jimmy Ormond also accounted for Ben Smith in the middle of Tudor's 15 minutes of catharsis.

Later, Tudor snaffled the vital wicket of Moore, who had been forced to leave the field in the rather rosy position of 144 for 1, and then required to return in the weedy predicament of 189 for 6. He had added an important 50 for the eighth wicket with Steven Rhodes before falling for a watchful 76 with only six overs remaining.

At 299 for 4 overnight, Surrey had been wonderfully well placed to put the game out of Worcestershire's reach. But the morning session summed up their season. In the previous six years they would have punished sides, battering them into submission and picking on their fragile confidence and spirit; but now they are too cautious, unsure of how to push home the advantage. Only one Championship win this season tells its own story, and that story must have been replaying itself over and over again in the minds of the incoming batsmen. They lost their remaining wickets with the addition of only 76 runs in just under 30 overs. No signs of asserting any kind of dominance, then. Worse still, their last four wickets melted away for just a single run.

Only Mark Ramprakash's fifth century of the season allowed Surrey to set a competitive target against a side who have the rather fortunate habit of making big scores. They have reached 400 on six occasions this season, once going on to make 500 and another time they passed 600. With scores like these, Worcestershire are hard to beat, and a draw just isn't good enough for Surrey. They had better hope Tudor's efforts aren't wasted by the rest of the attack.