Ben Slater took full advantage of Guildford’s short square boundaries to hit nine sixes and 12 fours in a brilliant List A best 164 off 119 balls as Notts Outlaws, who totalled 378 for six, overpowered Surrey by 107 runs
And Rob Lord, a 23-year-old pacer making only his second senior appearance, was Notts’ star with the ball in front of a sell-out crowd of 2,000 at Woodbridge Road, impressing hugely with five for 45 as Surrey were bowled out for 271 in reply.
The Outlaws’ third win in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup’s Group B boosts their hopes of reaching the 50-over competition’s later stages, while for Surrey it was sadly a fifth defeat in five matches.
Only Dom Sibley, following up his 149 against Warwickshire two days’ previously with 72 off 81 balls, threatened with the bat for Surrey as Lord spearheaded an excellent Notts’ performance in the field.
Tailender Conor McKerr did have some late fun with three sixes and eight fours in a violent 36-ball 71 – the fast bowler’s highest score in any senior cricket – but by then it was just damage limitation for Surrey.
Opener Slater was joined by Jack Haynes, who struck two sixes and nine fours in a fluent 85-ball 86, in a superb partnership of 187 in 28 overs that is a List A second wicket record for Notts against Surrey. Both Slater and Haynes batted beautifully, with Notts’ eventual total also a record for List A games between these two counties.
Haynes, like Slater, will certainly always remember the day with affection as he came into the game with four ducks from his previous four innings in the competition. Yet if Haynes was anxious about extending such a remarkable and unwanted run of noughts he did not show it after Freddie McCann had hit five fours in a bright 28 before mis-hitting Ryan Patel’s medium pace to mid off in the seventh over.
Slater’s first six was pulled off McKerr, taking him to 22 and signalling more positive intent after a comparatively cautious start, but it was only once he had reached his eighth List A hundred – and seen Haynes cloth one to mid on the ball after thumping McKerr for a massive six – that the left-hander went into overdrive.
An over from leg spinner Cameron Steel cost 27 runs as Slater pulled and swept him for three sixes, adding two fours and a single for good measure, and time and again Slater flicked or bludgeoned the ball high over the legside ropes until, in the 46th over, he drove James Taylor straight to Ben Foakes at extra cover.
By then the Notts total was 345, Haseeb Hameed and Lyndon James had both gone cheaply attempting to hit out, but Matthew Montgomery had also played a lovely cameo of 38 in 21 balls before lofting McKerr to long off.
Tom Moores, with a jaunty unbeaten 24, ensured that Notts reached the sort of challenging total that Slater’s heroics deserved, and Surrey’s response only really looked up to that challenge when Sibley and Patel were adding 66 in 11 overs for the first wicket and when Ben Geddes also played well for a 32-ball 34 at No 3.
Patel pulled and drove sixes in his 35, before hitting James to deep mid wicket, and Geddes helped Sibley take Surrey on to 115 for one until a quite brilliant catch by keeper Moores proved to be a key moment in the game.
Geddes flashed hard at Lord and the thick edge seemed to be flying away to the boundary, only for Moores to fling himself high to his right to clutch the ball in one glove.
Rory Burns was then leg-before for a duck to slow left-armer Liam Patterson-White, another Notts bowler to impress even though Sibley did pull a rare short one from him over mid-wicket for one of his three sixes.
Surrey’s slide continued when Foakes (10) chipped Lord to cover, off a leading edge, and Steel (7) nicked the bustling Lord through to Moores.
Sibley’s departure, in the 31st over, left Surrey in an almost hopeless position – the opener held by bowler Lord when he skied an attempted pull – and, to his great joy, Lord’s fifth wicket arrived two overs later when Josh Blake (10) hooked straight to long leg.
After that, McKerr enjoyed himself as the dominant partner in a 71-run stand for the eighth wicket with Nathan Barnwell (17), but after he perished to a catch at long on the end came quickly. Both James and Luke Fletcher finished with two wickets.
