Eckersley leads way at Surrey
Tue 12 May 2015
Vice-Captain Ned Eckersley led the way with an attractive century as Leicestershire’s batsmen showed plenty of fight on the third day of the LV=CC game at the Kia Oval.
Surrey ended on 557 in their first innings as Kevin Pietersen posted a sublime 355 not out, the highest ever individual first-class score against County, off 396 balls with a staggering 36 fours and 15 sixes.
Eckersley recorded his second LV=CC hundred of the summer as County moved to 310-5 in their second innings, which was a fine effort after a long stint in the field over three days.
Angus Robson (55) played well, Mark Cosgrove (44) moved past 10,000 first-class runs in his career when registering his 12th run, and Niall O’Brien (38*) and Ben Raine (21*) put up resistance towards stumps as the team grafted their way into a lead of 45 with five wickets in hand.
Eckersley said: “We managed to get their final wicket quite quickly this morning and then it was a case of capitalising on a start and going big – which is something we didn’t really do in our first innings. If we can get a lead above 100 and perhaps 200 tomorrow then we can look to put them under pressure in the final innings.”
Twenty-nine runs were added to Surrey’s overnight total of 528-9 - all of them by Pietersen, who was left just two runs short of Bobby Abel’s 116-year-old record for the highest individual innings by a Surrey player. That was set against Somerset at the Oval in 1899.
There was a flipped four to fine leg, from a ball pitching outside off stump, a five when he tipped and ran for a short single to keep the strike and a run-out attempt ricocheted off the stumps to the boundary, a six slammed high over long off against Raine’s fast-medium, and then a four launched over mid off to go to his 350.
Matt Dunn, though scoring only five in 104 minutes, had stayed with Pietersen while a remarkable 139 runs were added for Surrey’s final wicket. Pietersen’s historic knock was the sixth highest score ever made in the County Championship and the seventh highest first-class innings made in England.
When Dunn popped up a catch to Lewis Hill at short square leg off a lifting ball from Raine, after 4.5 overs of the morning session, every Leicestershire player ran to congratulate Pietersen on his magnificent seven-and-a-half hour innings.
County’s second innings began badly with first innings century-make Hill leg-before to Dunn without scoring to the fifth ball of the opening over but Eckersley and Robson both impressed in the 161-run partnership which followed.
Robson’s 50 came from 94 balls with seven fours at the end of the 35th over while Eckersley, who dominated the alliance, moved to three figures in the 41st over from 132 deliveries with 17 fours. But Zafar Ansari and Gareth Batty, the Surrey spinners, chipped away at Leicestershire.
Robson became the first of three scalps for Ansari later in the over that Eckersley posted his century, falling lbw. Eckersley went on to strike a maximum but his tenth first-class hundred ended when he was beaten by the slow left armer's turn and edged to Jason Roy at slip.
Off-spinner Batty then snared Leicestershire captain Cosgrove, who had survived a stumping chance off Ansari on 14 but was caught at short leg by Rory Burns off the same bowler for 44 as he tried to flick away a ball to leg from a couple of paces down the pitch.
Leicestershire were still five runs short of making Surrey bat again when Neil Pinner, with whom Cosgrove had added 42, was leg before to Ansari for 24 after resisting for 74 balls. O’Brien and Raine battled hard until the close, however, seeing off the second new ball too as they added an unbroken 50 for the sixth wicket.
