COME the end of the season the few hundred folk who watched Surrey fall towards defeat yesterday might still be wondering how it happened. The scorecard suggests that Jon Lewis must have bowled like S. F. Barnes in his pomp to claim six wickets in the morning and propel Gloucestershire towards a first championship win of the season. But the truth is not so simple.

Lewis did indeed maintain a reasonable line and length for the most part and nipped the odd ball back in to the right-hander. Batsmen, though, discovered some weird and wonderful ways to donate their wickets and once Lewis set the collapse in motion, they also had to cope with suspicions of devilment clouding their minds. At this point they needed a psychologist, not a coach.

When Azhar Mahmood edged to second slip Lewis was only three wickets away from going through the card for the first time in a championship match since 19-year-old Richard Johnson recorded figures of ten for 45 for Middlesex away to Derbyshire in 1994. It was not to be and the ease with which Mark Ramprakash, impeccable, and James Ormond added 104 for the last wicket gave earlier events unflattering perspective.

That partnership ended only one short of the record for Surrey against Gloucestershire compiled by Bill Brockwell and Tom Richardson in 1893. It meant that the home side required 106 for victory and nerves jangled when Nayan Doshi removed Tim Hancock and Chris Taylor soon after tea, before Shoaib Malik calmed proceedings by clouting the young left-arm spinner for successive fours.

Lewis was honest enough to acknowledge the truth behind his ten-over spell. “It is a simple game and I just tried to stick to line and length,” he said. “There was a bit there, but nothing extravagant once the ball lost its hardness. The Surrey guys play at the Oval where the ball comes on to the bat, but they cannot do that here on a slower pitch. They wanted to force the tempo and we wanted to stop them.”

Ramprakash stood alone as a model of patience and discrimination. He was far from being strokeless, as the six fours in his half-century and a subsequent pick-up six against Mark Alleyne would confirm. In his own way, he kept things as simple as Lewis, hitting the bad balls, defending on his stumps and leaving the rest.

Surrey resumed still 87 behind and the loss of Doshi, the nightwatchman, in the third over of the morning should not have set off alarms. However, in Lewis’s next over, Jon Batty pulled to square leg and when Rikki Clarke and Alistair Brown followed not long afterwards Surrey had their backs against the wall.

Clarke went too far across and was struck on the pads, while Brown left one that cut in to send his off stump cartwheeling. The force was now with Lewis, from the Jessop Tavern End, and Nadeem Shahid and Azhar jabbed tentatively to become victims six and seven in successive overs.

If anything, Shabbir Ahmed generated more swing in the overcast conditions and bowled with far more discipline than he had first time around. While Lewis picked up the wickets, though, the Pakistan bowler had to wait until Ormond swung hopefully on a career-best 57, with ten fours, for his only reward.

Lewis’s estimate that Gloucestershire won all but one of the eight completed sessions was about right. They are off the bottom now, while Surrey, third going into this contest, can expect to find themselves some way down the table when they resume the week after next. Gloucestershire just happen to be the visiting team to the Oval.