Surrey v Derbyshire day 3

So where's your money with a day to go?

Surrey are 223 on with 7 wickets in hand and are likely to look to set us around 320-350 tomorrow. With Gloucestershire winning today and Surrey now just behind us in the table, this is a massive day of cricket. They can't afford to bat us out of interest in the game as they need to dangle a carrot and risk losing to beat us and leapfrog us in the table.

Our batting today was disappointing. When you're 168-2 overnight a total of 323 is poor. That we got so far was almost entirely due to Graham Wagg and Dan Redfern who shared a crucial stand that kept us in the match. To be fair, it was the sort of collapse that would have been total two to three years back and again a feature was the fact that players were prepared to battle.

Wagg took two more wickets in the Surrey second innings, but we will need to bat better as a team tomorrow to have any chance of the points in this one. A draw would not be the end of the world as there is a lot of cricket left in the season, but I hope that we at least have a go for the win points and Surrey make a game of it.

Whatever happens tomorrow, it has to be better than England, who have been shocking in this Test match. Bopara looks a shadow of the man who scores so many for Essex and it shows the gulf between REAL Test cricket and the early season matches against the West Indies, where Bopara looked a player of real class. He's been found out (for now) and both he and Bell could be under threat for the final Test.

Still, this is a Derbyshire blog, so enough of the Test cricket. Let's go for it tomorrow lads and lay the gauntlet down to the others in doing so.