A fascinating Ashes reprise between Shane Warne and Surrey’s two Marks, Ramprakash and Butcher, will resume today after the former England batsmen batted their team back into the match with an unbroken stand of 119 in 33 overs.

There was no time for any goading yesterday from Warne, who brought himself on with just three overs left and found significant, if slow, turn. Ramprakash, who has not faced Warne since the Ashes series of 2001, faced only two balls from the leg spinner and had looked in delightful form.

Bad light accounted for 36 overs and robbed the day of much of the tension that had been building since Warne’s typically aggressive declaration. Hampshire smashed their way from an overnight 352 for six to 481 for eight, with everyone taking delight in punishing Ian Salisbury’s long hops and full tosses. Twenty came off one over and 30 off the last nine balls of the innings before Warne declared, leaving Surrey an uncomfortable quarter of an hour before lunch.

Perhaps they should have sent out a “lunchwatchman”, because both openers were rifled out by high-quality seam bowling that served to emphasise further how poor Surrey’s had been.

Warne is a big fan of Dimitri Mascarenhas and is always putting his name forward for the England one-day team, so he threw him the new ball and Mascarenhas removed Scott Newman with the fourth ball of the innings. Newman poked defensively at a ball that was run across him and Nic Pothas took a good catch, one-handed low to his left. Jonathan Batty followed in the fourth over, edging defensively at one of several balls from James Bruce that seamed and bounced.

Pothas, 33 and another Warne favourite, continues to make a good case for himself and he shepherded Hampshire’s late order with a polished, chanceless and unbeaten 85. A South African playing on a Greek passport, who sits his UK Citizenship test next month, he seemed resigned to not being part of England’s plans before the Performance Squad was named yesterday.

“It’s been said that Matt Prior will now have a better chance of playing for England, which is probably right,” Pothas wrote in his newspaper column, “That’s the case in any walk of life — a managing director will naturally appoint people he has worked with previously — but if Prior gets the chance to keep wicket for England under [Peter] Moores it will be because he has done very well for Sussex in recent seasons.”

With Surrey on the ropes, bad light intervened to rescue them at 2.50pm. Twenty-one overs were lost, tea taken early, and when they reemerged under leaden skies, Warne tried to preempt the light metres, but only six more overs were possible before another stoppage. Warne went into full “teapot” mode. He remonstrated with Graham Burgess and Vanburn Holder, the umpires, and kept his players by the rope for ten minutes.

Fifteen more overs were lost before play resumed and both Surrey batsmen seemed to find things easier. Ramprakash caressed boundaries square off the back foot then danced down and lifted Mascarenhas for six over mid-wicket. Butcher drove with increasing touch, even hitting Warne out to the extra cover boundary, but Surrey have a lot more work to do if they are not to slip to a second defeat.