In the end, as it had been throughout much of the four days, Surrey's first win of the new season was a team effort. For a side accused of lacking togetherness in the last two and a half years that would appear to be a welcome development. Clarke, Ormond and Mahmood shared out the spoils with the ball. With the bat, however, there was really only one man occupying centre stage yesterday - Leicestershire's Darren Maddy, who batted steadfastly to hold up the Brown Caps victory charge.

Uneven bounce was in evidence as early as the first over of proceedings, bowled by Azhar Mahmood. Yet, unperturbed, H.D.Ackerman also collected two boundaries from it. Ackerman went to his fifty in 61 deliveries when he got an inside edge on a ball of Rikki Clarke, operating from the Bennett End. It raced down the slope to become his eleventh boundary.

Lewis, the Foxes supporter, who is regarded locally as Leicestershire's twelfth man, voiced his approval. But five overs later Lewis was nowhere to be heard as hush descended instantly upon Grace Road when the former Proteus Test player had his middle and off stumps rearranged by one that kept low from Mahmood.

107 for two became 132 for three when Dinesh Mongia got a bottom edge and might an almighty mess of his stumps in the 35th over of the hosts' second dig. Next, the hero of day two, John Maunders, was adjudged leg before to Jimmy Ormond; having struggled, at the other end, to come to terms with Salisbury's leg-spin, against which he was trapped on the crease more than once.

Ormond's next ball, to the Leicestershire skipper Jeremy Snape, shot along the ground. But, with Snape proving a reliable ally for Maddy, it took Surrey until an hour after lunch to make the next breakthrough, though not before Maddy had progressed to a courageous 125-ball half-century.

Snape, looking to leave Clarke alone, played on to his off stump in the 68th over. With Maddy still in, however, the visitors could not assume that their first win of the 2006 campaign was a formality. Half an hour was all it took to get their man, and it took a superb catch low and to the right of Azhar, at slip, to account for the under-rated all-rounder. Maddy had held firm for 290 minutes, faced 198 balls and struck twelve boundaries. Yet he failed, so cruelly, to reach three figures for the first time in the County Championship since June 2004.

With Claude Henderson departing first ball, which he failed to get across to, the writing was on the wall; even if it did take more than ninety minutes for Surrey to polish off the last three wickets, two of which fell to the bowling of Ian Salisbury and catches by Azhar Mahmood - the best of which sent Stuart Broad back to the pavilion.

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