Burns' captaincy status grows as his hundred leads Surrey

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Surrey 278 for 4 (Burns 137*, Foakes 72) vs Worcestershire
Scorecard

Rory Burns played a captain's innings of 137 not out as Surrey took the first day honours in their Specsavers County Championship match against Worcestershire at the Kia Oval.

Burns was joined by Ben Foakes, who scored a fluent 72 from 105 balls, in a fourth wicket stand of 125 as Surrey reached 278 for 4 against Division One's bottom side.

Promoted Worcestershire, who have begun the new campaign by losing all three of their previous games, bowled with spirit in the first session and a half after Surrey had chosen to bat on winning a toss.

Joe Leach's two-wicket burst immediately after lunch, in which he had both Scott Borthwick and Ryan Patel caught behind, initially pegged Surrey back to 99 for 3 - before Burns and Foakes carefully launched the counter-attack in impressive fashion.

At tea they had taken the total on to 176, with Burns on 84, and it was something of a surprise when Foakes fell in the 73rd over having just extra cover driven Ed Barnard regally for his 11th four. Barnard, to his credit, then produced a superb delivery which moved away from Foakes just enough to touch the edge of a defensive bat on its way into the gloves of wicketkeeper Ben Cox.

In the final hour and a half, however, Burns and Ollie Pope added a further 54, with Pope finishing unbeaten on 18, and by the close Burns had faced 294 balls, hitting 12 fours.

Earlier, Mark Stoneman's run out for 28 was the only blot on an otherwise profitable morning for Surrey as they reached 87 for 1 by lunch. England Test opener Stoneman featured in a hard-working first wicket stand of 50 with Burns, with both left-handers dealing well with a new ball that did nibble around enough to give Worcestershire's seam attack significant encouragement.

But then Stoneman pushed a ball from Josh Tongue into the covers, called for what was always going to be a risky single and was beaten by Barnard's excellent pick-up and direct hit on the bowler's stumps.

Both Borthwick and Patel got to 10 before the two left-handers were beaten by Worcestershire captain Leach's away movement from around the wicket and edged to Cox.

Fast bowlers Stuart Meaker and Conor McKerr were brought into Surrey's team, replacing Matt Dunn and Jade Dernbach, and Patel - who played in the draw at Lancashire last week - was pushed up the order to bat at No 4 in place of overseas batsman Dean Elgar, who is missing this match due to a prior commitment back home in South Africa.

For Worcestershire, the 20-year-old former England Under-19 all-rounder Ben Twohig was making a first-class debut and he bowled his slow left-arm spin with energy and decent control in several spells during a well-fought day in which Burns - and Foakes - proved to be the difference.

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T20s between all ICC members to have international status | Cricket

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Can T20 status help create a truly global game?

The number of teams with status to play international T20 cricket will increase drastically from the present 18 to 104. The ICC has approved international status for T20 matches between all of its Associate Members. The decision came after a week of meetings in Kolkata.

"The move, across both men's and women's cricket, is part of the wider strategic aim of using the T20 format to globalise the game," an ICC press release said. "New minimum standards will be introduced, making it as easy as possible for members to play international cricket in a sustainable and affordable way."

This will come into effect for women's cricket as early as 1 July, 2018, while men's cricket will see the change take hold from 1 January, 2019, at the conclusion of the cut-off period to qualify for the 2020 World T20.

Each one of the ICC's 104 member nations have now been awarded T20I status © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Full rankings will be introduced from October 2018 and May 2019 respectively. Until now, the only countries able to play T20 cricket with full international status in addition to the 12 Full Members were Scotland, Netherlands, Nepal, UAE, Hong Kong and Oman. In all the ICC has 92 Associate Members.

Geoff Allardice, ICC's general manager of cricket, told ESPNcricinfo that providing international status would motivate smaller cricketing countries to compete better as the stakes were higher. "The idea of status and rankings is to say to them that the results will count and the results will go towards improving your ranking," Allardice said. "You can show progress in the cricketing world based on your T20I ranking. And in a lot of countries, being able to show improvement on the world stage really carries a lot of weight domestically."

According to Allardice, the decision was taken following fieldwork carried out by a focus group from the ICC's Chief Executives Committee (CEC). "Over the past two to three years the CEC group has been doing a lot of work on the structure of international cricket and being able to create pathways that are aligned with the formats. We are providing incentives for countries to focus on certain formats. At the moment the World T20, with the most available spots, is the format for an emerging country to aspire to."

The most significant practical application of the decision to award international T20 status across the board will be a global qualifying event for the World T20, with members competing "at a global level with a sub-regional, regional and global qualification process every two years". That effectively means all of the ICC's members would have a guaranteed number of T20Is over two-year cycles through the qualifying event.

ICC chief executive David Richardson said: "We are particularly pleased with the unanimous agreement to award all T20 bilateral games international status and the move to create a global ranking system for T20Is. We are committed to growing the game and T20 is the vehicle through which we'll do this, and removing restrictions and having all members ranked is a positive step forward.

"We have already introduced a regional qualification pathway for the ICC World T20 in 2020, which is now underway, and we will continue to evolve our qualification structures across all three formats to enable members to play regular cricket and grow the game."

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ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

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