Alec Stewart has outlined Surrey’s determination to become the first side to win three successive County Championships in the 2000s – a competition he believes unofficially confers the status of best club in the world.
Yorkshire, Durham and Sussex (twice) have retained titles this century but fell short of adding a third.
Surrey start their defence and bid for three-in-a-row at Lancashire next April.
“Winning the County Championship is the biggest thing to win,” director of cricket Stewart said on Surrey’s media. “You’re representing the best club in the world. You want to win them all, obviously, but if you were told you could only win one each year it’s the County Championship.
“It’s probably the hardest one to win and it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of planning, and then great performances from the group of players.
“We’ve seen that this year, last year and 2018. This is a special group of players and just seeing them in the dressing room, seeing how they go about their business, that’s when I thought, ‘this group is serious about winning it again’. “
Stewart picked out the successful club-record chase of 501 – one short of the all-time County Championship record set by Middlesex in 1925 – to beat Kent in Canterbury last June.
“The way we got over the line there didn’t just say to our dressing room we can achieve anything, but it said to the rest of the league that this side has got what it takes to win the Championship,” Stewart said.
“I love winning so to have won it again this year is just as big and as good for me as the first time I won it in 1999.
“The red-ball four-day comp is still the pinnacle.”
Surrey chief executive Steve Elworthy, a former South Africa international who played for Nottinghamshire in 2003, added: “When I played across here, you realised the importance of county cricket, probably the most high-profile red-ball competition in the world.
“We’ve got to do everything we can to preserve that.
“Chasing the treble is fantastic, it’s a great achievement.”
Alec’s dad, Micky, won seven County Championships in a row in the 1950s.
“I just hope that there will always be a place for the first-class game and for what cricket was all about and what it stood for,” Micky said. “Apart from the actual playing of the game but how it was played and respect for each other.
“I’ve always respected the game of cricket.”
The last team to win three titles in a row were Yorkshire in 1968.
“What’s happened is all in the past now, the appetite to succeed again has to be there,” Alec Stewart said. “You can’t just sit back and go, ‘you know what, I’m comfortable, I’ve won it twice’. Since 2000, sides have won it back-to-back, can we be the first side [in the 2000s] to win it three times?
“Every player in that dressing room, young or old, will be working hard and preparing well to give it a red-hot go.”