Kent driven to distraction

Kent 153 and 79-1 Surrey 361

Kent found themselves in a bit of a jam yesterday. Nine of the team were caught up in the mother and father of a gridlock at the height of the morning rush hour, which caused the start of proceedings to be delayed by an hour and a half.

Apart from the captain David Fulton, who travelled by train from his Blackheath home, and Ed Smith, who prudently left Matthew Fleming's car at Marble Arch and took the tube, the rest of the team was left to cope with the result of a burst water main in Buckingham Palace Road and the added complication of an accident on Vauxhall Bridge Road as well as a mess of roadworks at Vauxhall Cross.

By the time they arrived in Kennington – Min Patel was the last to appear on the ground at 1.33pm, his car having overheated – they were drained from the stress of spending more than three hours trapped with thousands of other commuters in every driver's nightmare.

But if they expected Fate to show a little clemency when they finally showed up they quickly learned differently. After a 30-minute warm-up – although heaven knows why they needed one, they must have been hot under the collar after the journey through hell – they found a very different and far more dangerous driver waiting for them out in the middle, Surrey's Alistair Brown.

Brown tucked the first ball of the day away for two runs to bring up his fifty and, having reached the mark, he eased into cruise control and moved remorselessly to three figures for the second time this season.

Kent's attack stuck at it manfully and picked off his partners at regular intervals, but Surrey soon overtook their opponents' inadequate first-innings total and Brown's wicket remained disconcertingly intact.

He also supervised some telling partnerships, 86 with the nightwatchman Martin Bicknell, 65 with Ian Salisbury, 56 with Saqlain Mushtaq and a frustrating (from Kent's point of view) one of 46 with James Ormond.

Brown reached the 29th hundred of his first-class career at better than a run a ball, and the third fifty was not much slower. It was the 10th time that Brown had passed 150 and by the time he was out he had hammered a further partnership nail into the Kent coffin, hitting 24 of the 28 runs with last man Ed Giddins.

He finally gave up his wicket after almost five hours at the crease, thumping a ball down long-on's throat. His punishing 208-ball innings contained 29 fours and an enormous six over extra cover. The fact that Kent then managed to knock off 79 of the 208-run first-innings deficit for the loss of one wicket could not disguise the fact that from first to last yesterday they had been the victims of one-way traffic.