Durham are now one game away from reaching the Royal London Cup Final when they host Surrey at Emirates Riverside tomorrow [Tuesday 17 August] at 11am in the semi-final.
Alan Walker has named a 13 man squad for tomorrow’s Royal London Cup Semi Final with the only change from Thursday’s group game being that Paul van Meekeren will not be available. The Dutch seamer is no longer available for the club having joined up with St Kitts and Nevis Patriots in the Caribbean Premier League which gets underway this week.
The remaining 13 will be the same as the previous games in the Royal London Cup group stages.
Durham will face a Surrey side who beat Gloucestershire in yesterday’s Royal London Cup quarter final at the Oval, cruising to a five wicket win over the Bristol side. Surrey were on top from the off reducing the visitors to 137/7 before an 105 run partnership from George Scott and Tom Smith for the seventh wicket led Gloucestershire to 242/7. Surrey did lose two quick wickets in reply but 102 from Tim David in 73 balls saw Surrey home with over 8 overs left to go.
David, who is familiar with the North East having played for South Shields in the NEPL has 337 runs so far this campaign with an average of 84.24 including a top score of 140*. Ryan Patel is also in fine form and is Surrey’s leading run scorer with 377 at an average of 62.83. Former Durham batsman Cameron Steel will also return to the Riverside tomorrow and is available to play against his old club, as will Mark Stoneman.
All what stands between Durham reaching Thursday’s final is Surrey who finished second in group B, with fours and two losses from their 8 games. Tomorrow’s clash will be the 27th time Durham have gone up against Surrey in List A cricket with their most recent game being back in 2015, when Surrey won by 49 runs at Emirates Riverside. From that game in 2015, only Scott Borthwick, Graham Clark and Chris Rushworth played in the game, while Mark Stoneman was in the Durham team for that game.
Squad vs Surrey (17 August)
Alex Lees, Graham Clark,Scott Borthwick*, Cameron Bancroft, David Bedingham, Sean Dickson, Ned Eckersley, Chris Rushworth, Matt Salisbury, Liam Trevaskis, Luke Doneathy, Jack Campbell, Harry Crawshaw
Words from Scott Borthwick
“All the boys are really looking forward to the game against Surrey tomorrow and we know it will be a tough game, they are a good side so we know it won’t be an easy game tomorrow.
“Playing against Surrey tomorrow is going be exciting, I think for me the fact we are playing against Surrey is a little bit emotional, I have some really good friends there, the main one being Mark Stoneman and he was the first to text me when they won saying he was coming for me, but all jokes aside once the game starts it will just be another game of cricket and once we get into the flow of things we will be purely focusing on the semi-final.
“Apart from the hiccup at Scarborough we have played some fantastic cricket and have had an unbelievable competition, we have batters who are in form in Graham and Alex and their partnerships at the top of the order have been amazing. We have also got bowlers who have been bowling well and are starting to understand the methods in white ball cricket and yeah it has been a fantastic competition so far but we have two big games to come hopefully.”
Match Centre
The Club’s match centre will be in operation for the fixtures with live scorecards, statistics & video highlights as they happen. You can watch the game live via the Durham Cricket YouTube channel.