Only 38.4 overs were possible on the opening day’s play between Surrey and Northamptonshire at the Brit Oval, during which Scott Newman gave the England selectors another gentle nudge by making an attractive off 90 not out off 104 balls, including 14 fours and one six. He has now struck 409 first-class runs in seven visits to the crease this season.

The home team showed two changes from the side beaten at Lord’s. Graham Thorpe was included following a personal telephone call to the England boss Duncan Fletcher, while Martin Bicknell returned following a brief lay-off with a sore hamstring to make his 250th County Championship appearance.

After becoming only the second team to be inserted in a championship match at The Oval since May 2000, when play started at 2.45pm, Surrey made a positive start, racking up 79 without loss in the 23 overs before tea. In that time Scott Newman reached a 61-ball half-century, which was brought up with successive fours off Ben Phillips, the first tickled to fine leg and the second flicked through mid-wicket – that, after putting his first seven away through the off-side.

If the term “the ball stays hit” applies to anyone on the county circuit, it would have to be the flamboyant 24-year-old who, in the second over after the interval, came down the track and twice lofted Jason Brown over mid-off – the second time for a maximum.

Newman lost his skipper, who had received ten more deliveries for his 28, in the next over to a chest-high catch at slip off the steady Johann Louw, whereupon the rain returned to lop another ten overs off the schedule.

In the further 12.4 overs possible before bad light brought the curtain down on proceedings, Mark Ramprakash opened his account by taking 20 runs off his first twelve deliveries, including a six picked up over square leg off Brown. Two boundaries square of the wicket followed in the same over, which left the slow-left-armer nursing figures of 4-1-30-0.

A quarter of an hour after the offer of light was rejected, Steffan Jones squared up the former Middlesex man, who was brilliantly caught at second slip. Surrey’s second wicket pair had put on seventy in just 76 deliveries, during which time Newman had progressed, just, into the nineties.

GO TO:

BACK TO: