Mark Ramprakash will be 38 next week but his appetite for runs is undiminished. He reeled off his seventh century of the season and the 94th of his career yesterday to improve Surrey’s prospects of avoiding relegation and, at the same time, question Hampshire’s ability to mount a late challenge for the county championship.

Ask any bowler in county cricket and they will tell you that Ramprakash is still the best batsman in England, making it almost incomprehensible that the selectors have ignored him since he played the last of his 52 Tests in New Zealand in April 2002.

They can point to the fact that he had made only two hundreds and averaged a paltry 27.32 but in six seasons since then he has scored 9,494 first-class runs, including 38 centuries, at an average of 76.56, indicating that they have wasted a great talent that has simply matured like good wine.

England’s loss has, of course, been Surrey’s gain and his presence alone made sure that they took advantage of batting first on a good pitch against a Hampshire attack missing Shane Warne, who was in Spain nursing his broken rib, as well as Chris Tremlett and Dimitri Mascarenhas, who are away with England.

Warne will fly home this morning for a scan that will determine whether he will be able to play again this season but even he would have had to concede that Hampshire have no chance of catching Yorkshire, Sussex and Durham with this level of performance.

It was summed up by Daren Powell, their other overseas player, in his first over after tea. First he could not find his marker, then he lost his run-up, dropped the ball on his way back, bowled his first ball straight to second slip and was finally warned for overdoing the short stuff when he completed the over off a shortened run.

Scott Newman missed out when he was caught at short leg off Powell for 24 but Jonathan Batty helped Ramprakash to add 145 for the second wicket before he skyed Shaun Udal to extra cover for a painstaking 55. Mark Butcher joined Ramprakash to share an unbroken third-wicket partnership of 102 when bad light ended play 12 overs before the scheduled close.

By then, Ramprakash had scored 124 off 207 balls with a six and 16 fours, passing 30,000 first-class runs in his career along the way, in yet another batting masterclass. Only Graeme Hick, three years his senior, has a superior record among present batsmen, with more than 40,000 runs and 134 centuries.