Burns' 161 puts Surrey on top at Notts
Surrey skipper Rory Burns scored a career-best 227 against Lancashire last week
- Published
Vitality County Championship Division One, Trent Bridge (day one)
Surrey 339-5: Burns 161; Ahmed 4-69
Nottinghamshire: Yet to bat
Notts 1 pt, Surrey 2 pts
Rory Burns followed his double-hundred against Lancashire with 161 as champions-elect Surrey ended day one of their Championship match against Nottinghamshire on 339-5.
But by the close at Trent Bridge, the Surrey skipper found himself pushed out of the spotlight by 16-year-old off-spinner Farhan Ahmed, who not only claimed the wicket of Burns and two more Test players in Ben Foakes and Will Jacks, but finished a sensational first day in Championship cricket with figures of 4-69 from 28 overs.
The younger brother of Leicestershire and England prodigy Rehan Ahmed, at the age of 16 years and 189 days, Farhan is the youngest first-class player in Nottinghamshire’s history.
With half-centuries from Jacks and Ryan Patel against a depleted and relegation-threatened Nottinghamshire side, Surrey are in a good position as they seek to edge closer to a third consecutive title.
The home side – their options reduced by injuries, a Test call-up for Olly Stone and, in the case of Dane Paterson, paternity leave – also gave a first-class debut to pace bowler Rob Lord.
Unfazed by being swept for six and four by Burns, Ahmed was unlucky not to claim the Surrey skipper as his maiden Championship wicket before the visitors reached lunch at 88-1.
Lord took the only wicket to fall in the session as Dom Sibley was caught at second slip, the ball glancing off the opener’s bat as he swayed out of the path of a rising delivery.
Burns completed his fifty from 104 balls soon after lunch before surviving a confident appeal for leg before by Ahmed on 78.
His hundred came off a streaky inside edge off seamer Lyndon James that ran away for four, but his stand of 175 for the second wicket with Patel put Surrey in a commanding position on 203-2 at tea.
Patel had been caught behind for 77, a well-deserved maiden Championship wicket for Ahmed and a first victim behind the stumps for South African Test wicketkeeper Kyle Verreynne.
Burns clubbed Freddie McCann for his third six shortly before reaching 150, and the new ball was only two overs old when Ahmed dismissed Burns and Foakes with consecutive deliveries.
Jacks survived the hat-trick ball but after hitting Ahmed for his third six he was caught on the long-off boundary to give the youngster his fourth scalp.
