Ward collects fourth century

Warwickshire 345 Surrey 319-3

For all that eight Surrey batsmen have supplied a total of 17 centuries to the championship cause – Ian Ward's fourth of the season yesterday being the most recent – it is remarkable that they have not gained maximum batting points on more than half dozen occasions coming into this game.

The bowlers, in contrast, have not failed in the 14 matches to date to pick up their requisite bounty, although they did allow Warwickshire's final wicket a lot of leeway before finally winkling out Melvyn Betts for 47.

Surrey's batting line-up – the majority of which is home–produced from the fertile hinterland south of The Oval – is an awesome collection of strokemakers, but under-pinning them all season has been Ward. While the hotshots have blazed away, often brutally, Ward has played the role of rifleman, picking off runs steadily and without fuss.

Twice already this summer he has scored match-winning hundreds, and over four hours here he was a study in concentration and single-mindedness as he laid the foundations for what should be a match-winning total. There was the ghost of a chance on 81, but generally few false shots among the 215 balls he faced.

Ward greeted Shaun Pollock's second and third spells with stunning drives either side of the wicket, each time off the opening ball of the spell, and always looked comfortable playing off his legs.

He also found a sound partner in Mark Ramprakash, who is canny enough to know when to peek around a rock and fire off a big one. The pair of them piled up 204 runs for the second wicket in their 56 overs together.

Ramprakash's innings was peppered with boundaries and he also launched three sixes, one off the former Surrey left-arm spinner Ashley Giles. Sadly, having scored an unbeaten double hundred against the same opponents at The Oval earlier this season, he fell for 99 – the fourth Surrey batsman to do so this season – lbw to the persevering Dougie Brown, in the same over that Ward reached his hundred.

But his and Ward's departures merely brought the ominously in-form Nadeem Shahid and top gun Alistair Brown to the crease to heap mayhem on misery for Warwickshire. By the close they had put on 68 runs, earned a third batting point, and taken Surrey to within 26 of the home side's first innings total.