By anyone’s standards, a breakthrough season like 20-year-old Tom Curran’s – 74 wickets, all delivered with zip, pace, swing and skid – is pretty good. But Curran’s 17-year-old brother, Sam, is a veritable superstar: the youngest player to take five wickets on Championship debut and an accomplished and stylish bat. His boyish face betrays bucketloads of bottle, all before he’s old enough to buy himself a beer, which is notable given Surrey will surely have a title to celebrate on Friday – yet another day off school.
Tom’s superb season has occasionally been obscured by the sheer youth and precocity of Sam, whose day was improved further by an England Under-19 call-up. Thursday – when the pair joined a small band of brothers to have taken all 10 wickets in an innings – while one for their family to savour, was very much Tom’s. He picked up seven – the second time he has done so this season, then struck in his first over as Northamptonshire followed on. He emerged from Sam’s shadow, where he has admirably and often brilliantly operated since mid-July, an advisory arm never far from his younger brother’s shoulder as all and sundry have been drunk on Sam.
Approaching the crease rhythmically with a strong forward lean, he skips through his action, finding pronounced movement in the air and a touch off the pitch, too. He was far too hot for Northamptonshire to handle.
After Sam’s elegant 61 had ended only because he ran out of partners, he then chipped in with the three wickets Tom had not claimed.
The defining feature of their late father Kevin’s career – as exhibited by his all-round role in Zimbabwe’s famous win over Australia in 1983 – was his inability to remain out of a game for long; it’s a happy trait that both have inherited.
There are precedents for the brothers’ remarkable wicket-taking feat, but not many; Charlie and Jack Oakes were the last to do it in the Championship, for Sussex against Somerset in 1950, while WG and EM Grace did it on this ground for Gloucestershire in 1871.
Most recently, Bernard and Nicolaas Scholtz achieved it for Namibia against Kwa-Zulu-Natal in 2011. It would be a great surprise if this was the final time the Currans were to pull it off.
With 410 in the bank and some subservient opponents waiting, Tom got to work setting up a procession immediately, as Ben Duckett flashed and Gary Wilson dived to his left then Alex Wakely was trapped plumb in front.
Rob Newton looked unlucky to be given leg before to Sam, before Rob Keogh drove loosely at Tom and edged to second slip and Adam Rossington was fooled by a nip-backer three balls later.
David Murphy inside-edged Sam, before Graeme White looked foolish leaving one from Tom that came back in extravagantly and took off stump and Mohammed Azharullah played on. It was all sewn up in a ball under 30 overs as Rory Kleinveldt – with a runner – tried to heave to leg, with all but Matt Dunn’s four bowled by the brothers, who found swing and seam.
Only Josh Cobb, who has played every match this season, stood firm, but Ben Duckett and Alex Wakely looked fluent in magnificently fighting back after Ben Newton nicked off Curran’s third ball of the second effort.
Northamptonshire were just 77 behind at the close, as evidence of backbone finally emerged, with Duckett bringing up a magnificent fourth century of the season – full of tidy drives, cute cuts and wristy bunts – as the day drew to a close. Wakely, on 93, is well-placed to do the same after surviving a testing early spell from the elder Curran.
