  Indirect methods play an important role in the determination of nuclear
reaction cross sections that are hard to measure directly. In this paper we
investigate the feasibility of using the so-called surrogate method to extract
neutron-capture cross sections for low energy compound-nuclear reactions in
spherical and near-spherical nuclei. We present the surrogate method and
develop a statistical nuclear-reaction simulation to explore different
approaches to utilize surrogate reaction data. We assess the success of each
approach by comparing the extracted cross sections with a predetermined
benchmark. In particular, we employ regional systematics of nuclear properties
in the 34 <= Z <= 46 region to calculate (n,gamma) cross sections for a series
of Zr isotopes, and to simulate a surrogate experiment and the extraction of
the desired cross section. We identify one particular approach that may provide
very useful estimates of the cross section, and we discuss some of the
limitations of the method. General recommendations for future (surrogate)
experiments are also given.
