Record Breaking Third Wicket Stand Leads to a Draw

19 June 2009

Surrey drew with Leicestershire at Grace Road after a record breaking third wicket stand between Hylton Ackerman and Boeta Dippenaar of 314 to help the home side bat out the day to finish on 487 for five.

Surrey started the morning hoping for an early breakthrough after Hylton Ackerman and Boeta Dippenaar resumed their stand of 91 overnight. The experienced pair continued in the same vain as the Surrey bowlers found little life from the pitch. Ackerman was more attacking during the morning session and took advantage of some loose balls when the second new ball came around, 15 overs into the day. Surrey’s hopes of forcing a positive result depended upon removing one of the two former South African Test batsmen. It was not to be as Ackerman cruised to 100 after finding the boundary fence for the sixteenth time with a cut shot off Jade Dernbach, it had come off 121 balls.

Dippenaar was playing the captain’s role by not giving anything away and he took his time to reach three figures before lunch. He went to his own hundred off 233 balls as the pair took the game away from Surrey. The pair looked unfazed and did not play an errant shot, not since the edge off Ackerman was costly dropped by Chris Jordan on the third afternoon when on eight. The pair were not just scoring runs, but also taking time out of the final day as the draw was becoming more and more likely.

The afternoon session again belonged to Leicestershire as the pair continued along their merry way, taking their partnership past 250 and then 300, as they scored a record third wicket stand against Surrey by a Leicestershire pairing. The Surrey bowling was mainly over to the spin pairing of Chris Schofield and Murtaza Hussain, but the pitch offered little turn and was slow in pace, allowing the batsmen time to watch the ball safely onto the bat. The batsman did not waver in concentration, until Usman Afzaal was brought into the attack. He then bowled a loose full-toss to Dippenaar when he was on 143 and tamely hit the ball high to mid-on where Andre Nel was waiting to take the catch. Dippenaar had been at the crease for nearly five and a half hours and his dismissal ended a 314 run stand with Ackerman.

Usman then shocked Ackerman to bowl him for 180 as the two Leicestershire batsmen followed in quick succession, but the game was safe and the two South Africans had done the job for the home side. Usman then grabbed a third wicket in unusual fashion when Jim Allenby swept hard into Michael Brown’s back at short-leg and the ball ricocheted back to Jonathan Batty behind the stumps. Allenby caught for 11 and Leicestershire 421 for five.

James Taylor and Tom New then batted out the remainder of the day until 4:50 pm, when the match was drawn. They faced some rare bowling from Scott Newman and Brown’s first ever ball in First-Class cricket. Surrey took 10 points from the match to move into second place in the table on 62 points.

Click on the 'Play Video' button in the picture above to watch the highlights and hear the thoughts of Chris Adams ahead of the second phase of the Twenty20.