Cricket: Bicknell's spell sparks collapse
Surrey 228-9 Hampshire 63 Surrey win by 165 runs
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Your support makes all the difference.To Surrey a crushing victory and two crucial points to leave them with a good chance of qualifying for the knock-out stages of the Benson and Hedges Cup. To Simon Renshaw, the Hampshire seamer, a share of the honours. Renshaw, 23, helped complete a bizarre Hampshire double. Three days earlier, in the same competition, John Stephenson, their captain, had recorded the worst bowling figures (2 for 79) by any Hampshire player in the Cup.
In yesterday's rain-interrupted day Renshaw picked up six for 25 - the best figures by any Hampshire bowler in the 50-over competition. Not that it did his side any good. Their batting let them down again and they slipped to their second heaviest defeat in the Cup. They have now lost all six of their one-day matches this season.
They were five wickets down with just 23 runs on the board, thanks to a spell of 3 for 0 in seven deliveries by Martin Bicknell. Few sides come back from from that position - Surrey, as it happens are the exception. They can, and did, wriggle out of a sticky situation, but they bristle with aggressive strokeplayers. Hampshire do not.
Matthew Keech spent an hour reaching 20 and Paul Whitaker's duck took 20 minutes as Surrey's four seamers dominated. By then the best had gone.
Hampshire crept past their lowest total - 50 against Yorkshire at Headingley in 1991 - but not by much. Surrey also had the edge in the field. James Knott (son of England and Kent's Alan) pulled off a stunning catch to dismiss Matthew Hayden, and Ben Hollioake leapt left-handed to hold on to a scorching drive at mid-off from Dimitri Mascarenhas.
But Surrey could have subsided to little themselves, stumbling as they did at the start. Their normally tough top order had all the resilience of wet tissue as four wickets fell for 22.
It called for some discipline and Adam Hollioake, their captain, obliged. In 99 balls of graft and craft Hollioake guided them back into the realms of respectability earning himself the gold award. He and Nadeem Shahid (52) chipped away at the Hampshire attack and put on 138 for the fifth wicket.
Hollioake reached 80 before he fell to the first brilliant catch, his Hampshire counterpart John Stephenson sprinting 30 yards to deep midwicket to take a stunning catch over his shoulder. By then though Hollioake had done enough to restore Surrey fortunes.
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