Surrey: South London's finest family firm set out stall as upwardly mobile operators

This season, clubs in the First Division of the County Championship will be following closely the progress of a south London family firm, Butcher & Son - aka Surrey.

Founded in 2006, the south London partnership of Alan and Mark enjoyed instant success when they hauled Surrey out of the Second Division and restored them to cricket's upper echelons at the first attempt.

Relegation from the First Division in 2005 had been a metaphorical boot up the collective backside for the one-time strutting Brown Hats.

But with so many cricketing egos in one basket it needed someone and something special to nurse the squad back into some sort of shape and restore their pride, self-belief and motivation in order to win promotion.

The "someone special" was Alan Butcher, appointed coach in succession to the straight-talking Australian hard-head Steve Rixon. The "something special" was the working relationship Alan has since forged with his son Mark, the Surrey captain.

Mark admitted that initially he had his reservations. "I did wonder how it would work out, particularly as we had had a pretty average experience with the last coach." Alan had no qualms. "I was not apprehensive about taking over with Mark as captain, because I think we have fairly similar ideas on how the game should be played."

Rixon's one-approach-suits-all style of man-management had not suited the Surrey dressing room. Butcher Snr adopted a very different approach. For a start, he organised a Myers-Briggs psychology test to ascertain the personality types among his squad.

Then he sat the players down and made them talk, one to one, encouraging them to air any and all grievances they had harboured about each other over the last few seasons.

Initially Mark had shaken his head at the strategy. "Obviously we had a lot of difficulty in the years before Al took over, and there were a lot of issues, grudges and things that people still held and would not have got aired had Al not come in and made it a massive priority.

"But I was sceptical. However, it became evident three-quarters of the way through the season that the approach Al had taken was the right one. It has been very interesting to watch the way he works with individuals.

"Having said that, sometimes the approach that I take, my default position if you like, is the one that gets the results. But on the whole the balance between the two of us is pretty much right. We dovetail quite nicely."

That "default position" is probably what has earned Mark the sobriquet of "Captain Grumpy" in the Surrey dressing room, but it is clearly a nickname given fondly, because each man understands his role perfectly.

Alan explained: "Because our thoughts on the game are fairly similar I tend to let Mark captain the side on the field; I will have some input if I feel it is necessary, but in general I think the captain is the person who has to run the game on the field."

Mark said: "I take a back seat at coaching time, but once we get away from the pre-season and cricket proper starts, my input becomes much more significant."

The relationship clearly works, although of the two men it is Mark who is less sure of how it is developing. "On the cricket side of things we are more like fellow professionals than father and son. We are mates."

That sounds clear enough, but then he hesitated before saying: "Sometimes from my angle it can be a little frustrating because he is also my dad. When I was growing up I spent a hell of a lot of time watching him and listening to what Al had to say on cricket.

"I still want to learn from him, but there is also that desire to impose my thinking, my beliefs and my feelings on things in the game as well.

"As captain it is tempting to adopt the attitude, 'I am captain, therefore I must know everything, therefore this how we go'. But it's important to take the ego out of the whole thing and try to do what is best for everybody, which often means eating a bit of humble pie and asking, 'OK, so how would you have done it, Al?"

"It's still only the start of the second season working together, but I'm finding it a lot easier to say what is on my mind."

Father and son care about Surrey, that much is obvious. "We do go out for the odd evening meal and talk Surrey cricket over a glass of wine," said Alan. "We are both passionate about Surrey cricket."

And passionate about righting a perceived wrong. "Last season," said Mark, "for the first time in Surrey's history we were in a situation where, no matter how many matches we won, we could not win the County Championship, because we were in the Second Division. That hurt."

He left the last word to his father. "We are not going to be content with just making sure we stay in Division One. There is no reason why we can't set out at the start of this season harbouring real hopes of actually winning the title."

Their rivals have been warned.