County Championship: Surrey take grip on contest with Durham

Surrey’s strength in recent years has been in bowling first with 20 of their 27 wins across the last four seasons coming this way.

With a one-point lead at the top at the start of this week’s round of matches, they made a fine start after lunch, as Clark had Durham captain Alex Lees lbw for 20, coming round the wicket.

However, the pitch was playing nicely as Gay and Ben McKinney put on 73 for the second wicket until 20-year-old McKinney tried to go big off Kishore and was well caught by Lawrence diving forward at long on for 24.

Gay had stylishly moved to 97 off 96 balls after tea, hitting 11 fours and a six, and seemed certain to score a fourth hundred of the season, but Surrey tied him down until he clipped Sam Curran to midwicket to fall one short with the score 173-3.

Robinson tried to be positive, but that was his undoing as he tried to hit against the left-arm spin of India’s Kishore and skied a catch to long-off.

And Surrey took a real stranglehold as Ackermann went to a bat-pad catch off Lawrence to leave the hosts 219-5.

Night-watchman Codi Yusuf got through to the close, but Durham, looking over their shoulders in eighth place, have it all to do on day three to avoid defeat.

It could have been even better for Surrey but for three dropped catches, which cost 110 runs, but they will still be confident of heading south with a fourth win of the season.