Tail-enders help Ward guide Surrey to improbable win

Kent 374 and 260 Surrey 225 and 410-8 Surrey win by two wickets

Surrey yesterday created a little bit of history when they scored their highest fourth-innings total to win a championship match, and in so doing stretched their lead at the top of the county championship.

Architect of the improbable victory was their opener Ian Ward, who saw them through from start to finish to reach a career best 168 not out – 10 more than his previous highest, scored, remarkably, against Kent two years ago – as he helped Surrey's last two wickets add a staggering 202 runs.

However, the sometime England opener played down his part in the victory, preferring instead to give credit to his eighth- and ninth-wicket partners, Saqlain Mushtaq and Jimmy Ormond.

"The pressure was not on me," Ward said, "it was on Saqlain and Jimmy. They should take a huge amount of credit. I knew they could both bat, Saqlain even has a Test hundred, which is more than I can say."

Surrey had begun the day a remote 146 runs away from the victory target of 410; Kent knew they had to pick off the last three wickets and they would move into second place in the table.

But when Saqlain drove the final ball of the first over to the long-on boundary the intent was clear. So were the omens, especially 11 overs later, when the same batsman, having reached a cautious 39, miscued a drive to mid-off. With the bowler Amjad Khan rooted to the spot at the end of his follow-through and mid-off standing like a pillar of salt, Kent's acting captain Min Patel sprinted around from mid-on, but his sprawling dive was in vain and he spilled the awkward chance.

Cruelly, in the same over the Pakistan off-spinner launched another ball way over long-on for the second six of his innings and Surrey were off and running again.

Saqlain eventually fell shortly before midday when he mis-hit Khan to Patel at wide mid-on, but by then he had chipped in with 60 and had shared in a 105-run stand.

Ormond joined the fray and he too showed he was no mug with the bat. The way he pinged the second ball of his innings from Martin Saggers to the boundary with a perfectly-timed clip off his legs revealed a batsman of quality. That took the burden of care off Ward's shoulders, allowing him time to play his own game.

"Just before lunch Jimmy and I realised that, with what they were doing and more importantly with what they were saying, that they felt we could win," Ward said. "We were 50-odd away at the time, but treated it as if we were 150-odd away, so there were no big shots. The only calculated risk I took was when I swept Min Patel for six."

That shot came in an over that yielded 13 runs. Thereafter Kent heads went down and Surrey tails went up; and at 2.35pm, Ward straight drove the winning run to the uninhibited glee of his team-mates on the dressing room balcony.