Modus Longhopper Random and a Toothless Shark Attack

Let's have a look at the new scoreboard ...

Hopperational details
Date & Venue	Friday 13 June 2014 at The Oval
Result	Surrey beat Sussex Sharks by 10 wkts Sussex 148-5 from 20 overs (Joyce 45, Wright 31, Brown 33*, Machan 21) (Peterson 4-0-26-2, Batty 4-0-15-1) Surrey 149-0 from 15.3 overs (Roy 81*, Amla 61*)
Competition	T20 Blast - South Group
Hopping	First proper cricket post for this blog, my second time at The Oval.  I do not have complete records for my occasional trips to live cricket, but I think this is one of seven venues I have ticked off.  The others would be West Bromwich Dartmouth (Birmingham League), Lord’s, Edgbaston, Trent Bridge, Northampton and The Rose Bowl.  Match watched in the company of several esteemed work colleagues thus ensuring top quality intellectual conversation and debate between the overs and no involvement whatsoever with making beer snakes, oh no.
Pre-match preparation
Mainly consisting of being ready for a Le Mans style departure from the car park at the end of the school working day!
This match in one sentence
Sussex, put into bat, stuttered their way to a total of 148-5 before they were blown away by Roy and Amla, whose unbeaten partnership won the game for Surrey in the sixteenth over.
So what?
Surrey keep alive their hopes of a quarter-final spot as they have a 3-2 win-loss record, and stay ahead of Sussex (2-4) who now look unlikely to get past the group stage.
The drama unfolds
I started to do a ball-by-ball scoresheet but the combined effect of various porters and ales meant that it all fell apart in the 15th over when I must have missed an extra or the batsmen crossing or something.  Oh well.  Colleagues were sympathetic and commented that I was losing weight - I assume that's what "lightweight" means in this context.  Respect to scorers – the level of concentration needed for T20 is considerable! Surrey won the toss and chose to bowl first.  Luke Wright dominated proceedings in the early stages and Sussex reached 43 without loss at the end of the six-over power play (where field restrictions apply).  Wright took a six and a four from Jade Dernbach’s first over and another four off Kevin O’Brien.  Azhar Mahmood was more economical in his first spell of 2-0-7-0. However, Wright was bowled in the 7th over by Tom Curran and then the innings lost momentum as slow bowlers Robin Peterson and Gareth Batty applied the brakes.  Batty only conceded 15 runs from his four overs and the spin pair took three quick wickets to leave Sussex on 66-4 just after the midpoint. Ed Joyce struck a few blows (5x4, 1x6) on his way to a top score of 45, supported by Ben Brown (1x4, 2x6), but you were left feeling that Surrey would not be disappointed with the decision to field first.  Sussex 148-5 Here's a scene-setter clip which is the final over of the Sussex innings, bowled by Azhar Mahmood. The reply soon turned into an anti-climax, as can happen in T20 (and maybe more often than the authorities would like us to notice).  The crowd on our patch started to make their own entertainment as Jason Roy and Hashim Amla imposed themselves on the attack.  I wonder when the physics of beer snakes will make it on to the mainstream physics syllabus - this will be vital knowledge for the next generation of cricket fans.  The score was 19-0 off two overs and then into the 60s before the end of the powerplay.  Roy’s 50 came off 27 balls faced and the team passed 100 in the 11th over.  Monotonous but brilliant. Here's a clip, including one of Roy's sixes and some slightly less coherent commentary and less steady camera work ... Kevin Pietersen, listed at number three, never made it to the middle.  Amla reached his 50 in the 14th over and the result was never, ever in doubt.  The final boundary count was 8x4 to Amla and 11x4 and 2x6 to Roy.  A very impressive, dominant performance and nothing really to tell about the bowling figures except a whole line of zeroes in the last column.  Surrey win by 10 wkts
Ground Pix
Match (and Beer Snake)  Pix
Matthew Machan (Sussex) in the foreground, The Shard on the skyline Sadly, Newton, Rutherford and Einstein never experienced the Beer Snake phenomenon and as far as I know there are no definitive equations covering the critical parameters such as the angle of dangle and the topple point.  When they have sorted this microwave big bang background radiation anomaly, I am sure physicists will get right on it.  We can confirm that the Heisenberg principle applies - a given steward can know that a snake will appear, but he can never know the exact position AND the exact momentum of the snake at the same time.
What Next?
No idea.  Watch @GrahamYapp on Twitter for details!