Inside the Fall of Surrey's Title Machine

By late August 2024, Surrey were not defending a title so much as running a system. Champions in 2022 and 2023, top of Division One, they arrived at the Oval to play Lancashire with a method that was sculpted to win games at home. Rory Burns won the toss and chose to bowl, with five seamers at his disposal. The attack was led by Dan Worrall, a signing Surrey made for the start of the 2022 season, and Jordan Clark. Lancashire were bowled out for 204 inside a day, and by the close Surrey were 83 without loss, the match effectively decided going into the morning of day 2.

Burns made 227 across day 2, and Surrey declared on 444 for 9. The third day was lost to rain, but on the fourth, the five seamers returned to skittle Lancashire for 177, sharing all twenty wickets in the match between them. Surrey won by an innings and 63. It was not a famous win. It was the method working exactly as designed, on pitches that Lee Fortis and his crew produced throughout the Surrey reign. For three seasons, this was simply what Surrey did.

But by the start of this season, Burns was putting it plainly: “We have been the people with the target on our backs for a period of time. We’re now chasing someone else.”

In 2023, Surrey’s attack took 254 wickets at 25 apiece, their best season with the ball in five years. This year, they have averaged 49, by far the worst in the division, nearly nine runs a wicket adrift of the next team. On a scale where 100 is the divisional average and every twenty points a standard deviation, their attack has fallen from 120 in the title years to 49 this season: from one of the best in the country to the worst in the division. Their batting rating is 130. Only the bowling has moved. Surrey have averaged 41 with the bat this season, the highest in Division One and their best over the past five years, even with Foakes missing five games and Smith away with England. Lawrence has made 788 runs at 65 and Sibley 690 at 57. It is one half of the side falling away.

Surrey have not won a Championship match at the Oval since May 2025. Five games, four of them draws, on pitches the club itself has called lifeless. But in May 2024, on an Oval surface where Warwickshire made 343 and Surrey replied with 464, Kemar Roach took six for 46 in the third innings, bowled them out for 209, and Surrey knocked off the rest one wicket down. The bowlers took twenty wickets on a pitch that offered them nothing. Two years on, that attack has scattered. Roach has gone to Durham, Jamie Overton hasn’t played a first-class game in 2026, Gus Atkinson plays at England’s discretion, and Dan Worrall, who took 52 wickets at 17 in the last title year, has bowled just 70 overs all season through injury, having been Surrey’s highest wicket-taker all three title years. As the winning slipped away in 2025, head coach Gareth Batty admitted it was “hard to keep going to the well.”

Essex visited the Oval in April 2026. Surrey took a 63-run lead into the third innings on another easing Oval track after putting on 472 in response to Essex’s first-innings 409. Essex made 302 for 2 before the game ended in a draw at 4.50pm on day four. Abbott, Clark, Fisher and Lawes bowled 41 overs between them with no return. By the close, Burns and Sibley had bowled seven and six overs, respectively, and Foakes’s two overs strained his side; he hasn’t played since. Across the season, it reads the same. A wicket every 46 balls in 2023, one every 80 now. Sean Abbott, the most-used bowler, averages 65. Reece Topley 68. Dan Lawrence has sent down 178 overs of off-spin, averaging 73. Clark and Fisher have been the most effective bowlers with 41 wickets combined, but Surrey are lacking the depth of quality that won them the titles.

Surrey go into the last block of games with six to play. There is one sign of what it might look like: last September, on county debut, leg-spinner Chahar took eight second-innings wickets to beat Hampshire away, the sort of thing Surrey signed him to do. He is back for the run-in, and whether one spinner can repair the holes in this attack is the question the last six games will answer. For three years, Surrey won because they had bowlers who found a way. They still have the ground, the batting and the crowds. They are, simply, an ordinary bowling side.

A version of this piece originally appeared in The Cricket Paper.