Cricket: Hollioake's haul spurs on Surrey

Glamorgan 101; Surrey 184-6

BIG BEN has just been ticking over of late. His shadow has not fallen across the record books as had been hoped following his explosive arrival on the scene a couple of seasons ago.

But it finally looks as if Ben Hollioake, the one-time testosterone tearaway, has got himself back on track. Perhaps inspired by some superlative swing and seam bowling from Martin Bicknell, he produced a high class display of pace bowling himself to finish with his maiden first class five-wicket haul.

There was an almost indecent haste to the Glamorgan demise. They may have dragged themselves off the bottom of the Championship table, but on this evidence they will very soon be back there. When it was their turn to have a dart at Surrey there was some indifferent bowling which permitted the home side to regroup whenever they did lose a wicket and ultimately, as the gloom descended, to allow Alistair Brown to counter attack in murderous fashion as he passed 50 for the second successive innings and proved that the demons which saw 16 wickets fall in the day, therefore entailing the obligatory reporting to Lord's, were in the batsmen's minds rather than the pitch.

But the day belonged to Hollioake the younger. He found pace and movement as he bowled unchanged throughout the first session and sent down a further three overs after lunch before Saqlain Mushtaq wrapped things up with his second wicket. The Pakistani off-spinner's first came shortly after the resumption when Hollioake took a comfortable catch at slip to dismiss Glamorgan's only real threat with the bat, fast bowler Darren Thomas, whose 23 was just one behind top scorer Adrian Dale.

The South African Test all-rounder Jacques Kallis was Hollioake's first scalp, playing back to a lifter that ended up in elder brother Adam's hands at slip. Dale was the first of a three-wicket spell in which the young Hollioake sent down 22 deliveries and conceded just three runs and also accounted for Alun Evans and Robert Croft.

His 5 for 51 was an admirable performance, but Bicknell was not far behind. His 3 for 24 off 15 overs could easily have produced more wickets. When bad light drove them off the Championship leaders were in a commanding position, leading by 83 runs with Brown still at the wicket.