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Woeful Middlesex lose 7th game

Nayan Doshi's four wickets for 22 runs set Surrey up for a convincing seven-wicket win over Middlesex in the Twenty20 Cup at The Oval and kept their hopes of a quarter-final spot alive.

Doshi and Rikki Clarke (three for 18) helped reduce the visitors to 115 all out in just 18.4 overs and James Benning (61 not out from 33 balls with five fours and four sixes) and Azhar Mahmood (22 not out) showed no mercy as Surrey cruised to victory with 7.3 overs to spare.

Doshi's heroics took him up to 39 career wickets in the competition, a Surrey and competition best, overtaking Adam Hollioake's mark of 36, and yet again proved that spin does have a part to play in a competition in which they have never failed to make the finals day.

Benning, a candidate for the England one-day side in light of their current troubles, was clearly keen to get the game over in a hurry.

He hit left-armer Chris Peploe for three sixes in the 12th over to take him to his half-century and he finished the job off by smashing the spinner over midwicket for a match-winning finale.

Middlesex, for whom this was a seventh straight loss in the competition this year, were never at the races.

The visitors picked unknown Dawid Malan to open the innings and the 18-year-old took 21 balls to make 11 runs.

He managed to hang around for a while as the rest of the Middlesex order disintegrated.

The carnage started when Clarke took a superb catch off Mahmood to get rid of Paul Weekes and shortly afterwards Clarke had Nick Compton leg before wicket for 12.

New Zealander Scott Styris hit three sixes in a brisk 21 before he was bowled by Clarke to leave Middlesex 42 for three.

The middle order were exposed, and apart from 30 by the left-handed Billy Godleman, which included five fours, the visitors innings fell apart.

Doshi's left-armers bamboozled the Middlesex batsmen who fell to a succession of rash shots - none more so than Ben Scott, who was caught round the corner by Azhar for one when his main consideration should have been making sure his side batted their full allotment of overs before a sell-out crowd of nearly 23,000.

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