Surrey v Kent at The Oval

After lunch the sky was cloudy and batting harder, after tea drizzle oozed intermittently from the skies and there were light meter on the manual scoreboard drifted from one light to two and at several stages from 5:30 there were three lit.

The ball became soft and squidgy from the damp outfield - so much so that Adam Hollioake complained to the umpires after one firmly punched drive crawled to mid off. Brown batted well his sixty runs without ever quite finding his form before he was caught injudiciously playing across the line to a slow ball from Masters that kept low.

Ben Hollioake came in for a brief visit and struck two shots sweetly before lazily holing out to square leg, the loss of his wicket may well have had something to do with the sponge like ball, but it also had something to do with the laconic nature of the shot played, Ben had looked impressive in the two one day matches before this and it was a shame for him to have got out in that way.

Adam on the other hand was the pick of today's players, he struck a number of perfectly timed fours several so hard that not even the slow outfield could begin to slow them taking a particular liking to Min Patel and seeming totally assured until he gave Dravid a chance at second slip off Mark Ealham in fading light during the last over of the day, Dravid failed to even touch the ball though.

The morning session at The Oval went predictably until Ian Ward mistimed a drive towards square leg off the bowling of Masters from a ball that moved in slightly towards him, after Surrey won the toss and elected to bat.

The openers played steadily matching one another closely - they will be eager to put on a decent total after the poor scores against Yorks, Somerset and Durham, against this summers dreadfully weakened Kent attack. The visitor's cause was not helped an unfathomable decision to remove Min Patel from the attack immediately after a good ball found the edge of Ian Wards bat for the only other chance of the session.

The unusually high level of caution in the home sides batting was highlighted by the fact that Mark Ealham was allowed to get away with two bouncers at his modest medium pace.

Scoring was hampered by the slow outfield with several shots that would normally have run away for four only earning two runs and came to a halt at five past one with the fall of the wicket as Butcher and Thorpe set up camp to wait for lunch although Thorpe found a wide half volley in the last over of the session too much to pass up and crashed it through the covers hard enough to roll over the boundary.

There were cries of "catch it" after one ball from Fleming grazed a pad and a couple of half hearted LBW appeals when balls going high and wide of off stump touched the batsmen's pads on the way through to the keeper and during Fleming's last spell the wicket keeper will have considered himself unlucky to have been penalised two byes for a ball wide down the leg side.