BARELY 12 months after winning the National League, Surrey were relegated from the first division of the totesport League yesterday. Needing to win their final two matches to stay up, they were well beaten by a Steelbacks side that desperately needed victory. They will avoid the drop if they win their last game against Kent.

Not expecting the pitch to get any better as the day wore on, the Lions chose to bat first. It turned out to be an unfortunate decision. The ball seamed around extravagantly at the start, making batting a difficult proposition in the first hour, when Surrey lost five wickets for 50 inside the first 14 overs. When Northamptonshire batted, having been set a revised target of 189 in 41 overs under the Duckworth/Lewis method, the pitch offered much less movement off the seam.

Johann Louw and Paul Rofe, the Steelbacks opening bowlers, used the conditions well. Rofe, the tall Australian, soon bowled Jon Batty off an inside edge and later removed Mark Ramprakash’s leg stump with another off-cutter. In the meantime, James Benning, whose 19-ball stay brought him a pair of singles, was caught behind trying to free the shackles. One man who might have done, Adam Hollioake, hit his first ball for four but was then run out by Tim Roberts’s direct hit.

Alistair Brown and Azhar Mahmood helped to reconstruct the Lions’ innings with a sixth-wicket stand of 75 in 14 overs. Brown’s 51-ball 54 was his first league fifty of the season, but just when Surrey were hoping he might launch into one of his frenzied late- innings demolitions, he was run out by another direct hit from Roberts. Mahmood finished with 67 from 85 balls.

Although Roberts fell in the opening over, bowled by a ball that nipped back from Martin Bicknell, Jeff Cook and Usman Afzaal, both of whom were dropped in single figures in the same Mahmood over, gave the Steelbacks a useful platform with a second-wicket stand of 74 in 17 overs.

Surrey must have sensed they had a chance when David Sales was third out in the 28th over, but Afzaal calmed Northamptonshire nerves with a fine 86 not out off 112 balls. Graeme Swann gave him strong support in a match-clinching partnership of 48 in seven overs.