As Warwickshire ensured that they will remain amongst county cricket’s elite next season, Surrey had yet another day which started worryingly, finished better, but overall highlighted the reasons why they are immersed in the battle for Division One survival. Since any notion the visitors may now have of winning this game would be fanciful, Mark Butcher, Mark Ramprakash and the eight Surrey batsmen yet to come would do well to take a leaf out of Nick Knight’s book.

Captaining Warwickshire for the penultimate time in the championship, Knight stood tall for four hours and struck a determined 117 - his highest score of the season, which was also enough to take him past the 1,000-run mark this term in first-class cricket.

Even though the Oval outfit raised their game after he departed in the 58th over, the fact that Surrey trail their opponents by 68 runs going into the final day means the best they can now hope for from this contest is a draw. That would leave them 15 points adrift of Middlesex going into the last round of matches, which the long-term weather forecast is, reassuringly, saying will be dry with even the possibility of occasional sunshine.

Warwickshire’s continued existence in Division One was sealed when Saqlain Mushtaq edged James Anyon behind before he and Jade Dernbach could add to their side’s overnight score; let alone drag it above 250 and thus earn another valuable bonus point.

As if to celebrate, Knight and Westwood, cutting and driving on the up through cover, then tucked into some loose fare from Surrey’s all-Pakistan new-ball attack. Knight could have been out for nine, when Alistair Brown dropped a regulation chance at second slip off Mohammad Akram. But it was soon forgotten when the half-century stand was rattled up as early as in the ninth over, with Ian Westwood being the major contributor.

Their 95-run alliance for the first wicket was just eighty minutes in the making. It needed a good delivery to end it, which Dernbach supplied when he penetrated Westwood’s defences. Surrey’s 19-year-old seamer struck again in the 23rd over with the wicket of Jonathan Trott, who departed in similar fashion. With Azhar Mahmood accounting for Jim Troughton a short time after lunch the visitors might even have been entertaining thoughts of a slender first innings lead.

It was not to be, however, as Knight discovered a new ally in Alex Loudon, who made an attractive half-century - his first in the championship for eight innings - despite seemingly being put down, on 10, at second slip off the unfortunate Akram. Together, the fourth-wicket pair added exactly 100 in twenty-five overs before Knight tickled Murtagh behind. But Loudon continued to put pressure on the Surrey bowlers in conjunction with Michael Powell who also hit 60, including two lusty blows for six, despite taking 22 balls to get going.

Saqlain enjoyed his best figures for Surrey since July 2003, accounting for Loudon, who was sweeping when he dragged the ball on to his stumps, Tony Frost, who dabbed him to short leg, and Dougie Brown, caught down the leg-side, before rounding off the innings with the wicket of Powell, who was caught on the mid-wicket boundary. Sandwiched in-between the last of these two were the wickets of Neil Carter, who was caught at point off Azhar, and Makhaya Ntini, who was caught behind for a first-ball duck.

When the Ovalites batted again they lost opener Scott Newman - who has now scored more than 15 in just two of his last seven championship innings - caught behind off Dougie Brown in a fashion that will, by now, not be unfamiliar to regular watchers of Surrey.

Meanwhile, the defending county champions had to face up to losing Makhaya Ntini for the remainder of the county season after the Professional Cricketers’ Association's talks with the United Cricket Board of South Africa on behalf of Kent and Warwickshire ended with the UCBSA refusing to budge over Ntini and his fellow countrymen Andrew Hall and Justin Kemp appearing in to two Benefit matches later this week.

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