WHETHER Surrey lose points for their foolish ball-tampering in their last ill-fated game is a matter now in the hands of the ECB, but it will take rain or some rare Welsh defiance to prevent them from getting the maximum 22 from an altogether happier performance in this one. Martin Bicknell, in his 36th year and his twentieth season at the Oval, took his 1,000th wicket for Surrey in the course of an opening spell of two for 18 after Scott Newman, the latest in a long line of talented Surrey left-handers, had in one particular eclipsed them all.

No Surrey batsman had previously scored a double hundred and a hundred in the same championship game. His 219, coupled with 117 in the first innings, was devalued only to an extent by the Harleyford Road boundary, 58 yards from the pitch at its closest point. Four-day cricket has an unfair advantage but only Bobby Abel and W. W. Read have made more runs in a game for the county, both in a single innings at the end of the 19th century.

Newman is 24 and his poor fielding disturbed Rod Marsh when he was chosen for the National Academy in the winter before last but he made 1,162 runs in his first full championship season and, in his two innings this week, he hit the ball hard and handsomely. He used his height to drive with the straightest of bats and on this true surface he never missed a chance to pull towards the beckoning green seats of the sweeping new s tand. He must be assessed against other good young left-handers — Alastair Cook, Ed Joyce, Usman Afzaal or Michael Yardy, for example — but nothing will dim for him the glow of this particular Friday the 13th. He gave not a single chance until top-edging a pull to mid-on, having hit 28 fours and four sixes.

Robert Croft curled the ball on the sharp morning breeze and scuttled Richard Clinton on the back foot, but Newman played him positively and Mark Ramprakash without semblance of error on his way to what seemed sure to be his fourth hundred in as many championship games. That would have been nothing exceptional for one of the half-dozen best batsmen in the land but he was bowled by the spirited Andrew Davies, working to leg, four overs before Newman left to a standing ovation and the congratulations of admirably courteous opponents.

It brought them no respite as Alistair Brown and Rikki Clarke rubbed half the Dead Sea into the wound. From 22 balls Brown’s fast hands gained him five fours and two sixes, the first reaching the lofty second tier of the Vauxhall Stand, the second glancing the slate roof of the Bedser Stand on its way into the street. The ratatat-tat of boundaries continued as David Hemp and Michael Powell took the day’s run total to 536. Glamorgan will “ not go gently into that good night”, but their target of 525 is surely out of reach.

The official complaint by John Derrick, their coach, about Steve Kirby’s alleged artificial scratching of the ball last week has brought a demand by the ECB for an urgent report from Gloucestershire while Surrey’s internal report will be considered by the board early next week.