A TEST match fast bowler appearing as an amateur took a wicket with his first ball at the Oval yesterday, and then another with his sixth. It was the spark of inspiration that Surrey needed to record the first victory of a wretched season in their eleventh competitive match.

What is more, the bowler playing for nothing plans to turn out again tomorrow, when Surrey begin a home championship fixture against Kent and could even play against Gloucestershire next week. For Zaheer Khan, the India bowler, this is a working holiday with a difference.

Surrey spent most of last week trying to sign him as a temporary replacement for the injured Saqlain Mushtaq. Complications over securing a work visa, however, looked to have scuppered the effort.

Then, on Saturday night, Zaheer himself came up with the solution. He wanted to play, Surrey wanted him to play and the India team management were keen for him to regain match fitness after a groin muscle injury. They are hoping to recall him for the Asia Cup in Sri Lanka. So all Surrey officials had to do was to register him in time for the start of yesterday’s game.

For Will Jefferson and Alastair Cook, the young Essex openers, facing a Testclass bowler armed with a tourist visa and playing for fun is not an experience they are likely to forget. Jefferson was cleaned up by Zaheer’s first ball, a rapid and perfectly-pitched inswinger, and Andy Flower had already survived a leg-before shout from the third ball of the over when Cook was pinned in front.

Zaheer did then struggle for direction in the rest of a five-over opening spell costing 25, but later he also took a fine sprawling catch in the deep as Essex, kept in the hunt by Flower’s gritty 70 eventually came up well short. Jimmy Ormond bowled a telling late spell and Adam Hollioake’s brilliant diving catch at point to send back Flower also told of Surrey’s desire.

The Surrey innings, which was boosted by 12 runs because of Essex’s slow over-rate, was all about the continued prolific form of Scott Newman, who is the leading first-class runscorer in the country with 696 from ten innings, and the determination of Jon Batty, the captain, to lead his team out of their alarming slump.

Both, however, needed early moments of good fortune. Newman survived a hard chance to Paul Grayson at deep mid-off on 16 while Batty was badly dropped at second slip by Jefferson off Graham Napier before he had scored. Newman’s often flamboyant 106 took him only 104 balls and included a driven six and 15 fours. Batty’s 66 from 73 balls featured a boundary struck tennis-style when an attempted slower ball by Scott Brant became a looping beamer.