Nayan Doshi's four for 69, his best championship return since the end of 2004, had put Worcestershire into something of a spin by the time day three ended with the visitors 38 runs shy of avoiding the follow-on target of 352. Forced by the bad light to employ his slow bowlers and thus eschew the new ball, the Surrey captain, Mark Butcher, will not have been dissatisfied with the way things turned out.

Butcher will be particularly pleased with the new found form of his left-arm spinner who got the ball to lift as well as turn, especially after switching to the Pavilion End for most of the last session. Ian Salisbury also got in on the act, with all of the wickets yesterday falling to spin.

Resuming at 55 without loss, just eleven overs were possible before lunch; in which time Jaques moved into the forties with some authoritative strokeplay, while, at the other end, Moore dropped anchor to dine on 16 not out from 89 balls.

After the break, Jaques went to his first half-century for his new county, in 94 deliveries, with a cut four off Mohammad Akram. But when he tried to repeat the stroke against Salisbury's third ball of the day, the Aussie left-hander only succeeded in picking out Doshi at backward point.

Vikram Solanki collected four boundaries in three overs from Salisbury, but then, head back, perished in his attempt to launch Doshi over mid-off. Meanwhile, Moore had come out of his shell, forcing both spinners over mid-on and to the boundary. But it took an orthodox drive straight up the ground for his eighth boundary to bring up Moore's first championship fifty of the new campaign. His 233-minute vigil eventually came to an end when he was taken at slip off a top-edged cut.

Half an hour before tea Mark Ramprakash injured himself tumbling to stop a ball at mid-on and had to hobble off. His replacement was Chris Thompson; and in the third over after the interval Mihir Singh became Surrey's thirteenth man when Scott Newman pulled up in pursuit of an off-drive from Ben Smith off Salisbury.

Graeme Hick collected four boundaries in two overs from Azhar Mahmood, but then lost Smith to a miscue to long-off and perished, himself, at the hands of Doshi when he was caught where leg slip would have been off a top-edged sweep by Mahmood running round from slip. Steven Davies drove with confidence through square leg as well as nicely down the ground, but showed due respect to Doshi who also claimed the wicket of Gareth Batty, who got the shoulder of his bat on a ball that spat off a length, before the end.

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