At 4.30pm yesterday, as Mark Butcher was giving an impromptu press conference in the media tent at Whitgift School, to announce his retirement from first-class cricket, Michael Brown brought up the ninth hundred of his career and his second for Surrey. Although it was far from being a changing of the guard moment, it went some way to lifting Surrey, who'd had the stuffing knocked out of them by Derbyshire in the Pro40 League the previous day.

Last season, before the injury to his left knee returned, Butcher was opening the Surrey innings with Scott Newman. Fifteen months ago, the former England left-hander played arguably his finest innings as a Brown Cap when he made 205 against Yorkshire at the Oval. Since then, Surrey have only had two stands for the first wicket in three figures. Both of them have come in recent weeks, since Brown has been joined at the top of the order by Jonathan Batty.

Although it appears that Batty has lost the ability to get to fifty, the value of protecting the rest of the order from the new ball cannot be underestimated, especially as the Tiflex balls being used in Division Two of the County Championship this summer are said to go soft after fifteen overs.

At lunch, the Surrey openers had put on an unbeaten 105 in thirty overs, though Batty did have Wayne Madsen to thank for still being there, since Madsen was responsible for two drops at second slip off the 35-year-old wicketkeeper - off Nantie Hayward when he was 22 and Tim Groenwald when he was 33.

Two overs before the break Brown had brought up his fifty, in 91 deliveries, with the third of three fours in Steffan Jones's seventh over. In the 36th over, Brown was joined by Mark Ramprakash when Batty was brilliantly caught inches off the ground by Greg Smith at third man off Nantie Hayward; who can now boast having dismissed Batty while playing for three different counties.

Nine overs later, Ramprakash went past one thousand first-class runs for the nineteenth time in his career, when he drove Smith past mid-off for four. By tea, Brown and Ramprakash had put on 103 for the second wicket.

Brown reached his century in the 69th over, off 205 balls, shortly after Ramprakash went to his fifty in 94 deliveries. But the second new ball did for both of them. In the 82nd over, Madsen made up for his earlier lapses by taking a low catch at extra cover to see the back of Brown, who batted for 319 minutes, faced 248 deliveries and struck eighteen boundaries. In the very next over, Groenwald broke through Ramprakash's defences.

In deteriorating light, Stewart Walters and Usman Afzaal saw off what proved to be the last five overs of the day. Their brief stand was interrupted by a twenty-minute break after which Hayward attempted to ruffle Afzaal with some words of wisdom.

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