THESE are uncertain times at Surrey. They have a new coach, a new captain, and yesterday they experienced a whole new sensation — defeat by Middlesex, who had not beaten them in the Championship since 1995.

It is far too early to talk of a crisis, although four defeats in five games — a sequence that stretches back into 2003 — is about as bad as it gets for a side which until halfway through last season took winning for granted.

As Middlesex eased to their target of 297 for the loss of just four wickets, the body language of the Surrey fielders went from angry T-Rex to resigned tea-pot. Peeved glares followed dropped catches. It was all very untypical.

While Lancashire, the bookmakers’ favourites for the title, have zoomed off in another gear, Surrey are still trying to get out of reverse after last season’s dressing-room discontent, which culminated in the departure of their coach, Keith Medlycott.

On this evidence, his replacement, Steve Rixon, the Australian who coached New Zealand to victory in England in 1999, and the new captain, the wicketkeeper/opener Jonathan Batty, have some work to do.

This was a huge win for Middlesex. They trailed by 93 runs after the first innings, and the game appeared to be slipping away from them on Friday afternoon as Mark Ramprakash and Azhar Mahmood added a quickfire 113. But Surrey collapsed — another alarming new habit — and Middlesex stepped in.

On a pitch that had encouraged strokeplay throughout, and with the Lord’s outfield at its billiard table-like smoothest, the odds were always in their favour.

The helter-skelter events of the third day, when 383 runs were scored for the loss of 18 wickets, had left Middlesex needing a further 265 runs with all 10 second-innings wickets in hand when play resumed yesterday morning.

Their openers, Sven Koenig and Ben Hutton, began cautiously in front of a decent-sized crowd which contained several bare torsos lapping up the April sunshine.

Only six runs came in the first half-hour before the left-handed Koenig broke the deadlock by tucking Jimmy Ormond to the mid-wicket boundary. Hutton, another leftie, leg-glanced Mahmood for four in the next over, and Middlesex were away. They hardly looked back, and Surrey’s only glimmer of hope came in the last over before lunch, when Saqlain Mushtaq snaffled a furious Koenig at silly point for 62 to end an opening stand of 114.

The window on the Middlesex balcony that was smashed soon afterwards, raining glass onto the seats below, may or may not have reflected Koenig’s irritation. Nothing, however, was going to shatter Middlesex’s belief that this was a game there for the taking. They were even having the lion’s share of the luck. Hutton was dropped by Batty off the deserving Ormond on 48, then missed at first slip by Alistair Brown on 60 off the same bowler.

When umpire Roy Palmer turned down Ormond’s stomach-curdling shout for leg-before when Hutton was on 65, it was clear which side the gods were smiling on. Hutton’s eventual demise on the stroke of tea, caught behind off Saqlain for 88 off a painstaking 223 balls, was little consolation.

The end came quickly. Owais Shah, who at 25 has plenty of time to repair his reputation as English cricket’s most squandered talent, played some sparkling shots all round the ground before picking out long-on, and the gifted Dubliner Ed Joyce caressed 47 in 42 balls. Paul Weekes rounded things off by hammering an Ian Salisbury full-toss through the covers and punching the air in delight. Surrey might no longer be champions, but a win against them still stirs the juices.

The ruthlessness that gave them their strut under the captaincy of Adam Hollioake was missing in this game and Batty needs to find it quickly. Somehow, the Surrey stumble doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.