THEY say no man is bigger than the team, but Mark Ramprakash’s evermore macabre pursuit of his 100th first-class hundred may be testing the theory in the Surrey dressing-room to the full. Yesterday, it almost went without saying, was not the day. After moving from his overnight 19 to 42 with the caution of a man counting banknotes in a gale, Ramprakash got a leading edge to cover and received an ugly send-off from the bowler Darren Pattinson for his troubles.

Given his combustibility in recent weeks, it was a small mercy that Ramprakash limited himself to a beseeching glare towards umpire Peter Willey, who duly made a quick note of Pattinson’s indiscretion. Ramprakash’s struggles, though, are generating rather more column inches than that: nine first-class innings since he hit his 99th century against Sussex at the start of May have brought him 191 runs at 21.

One bookmaker immediately quoted odds of 7-4 against him reaching the landmark by the end of the summer. He has a maximum of 17 innings left, but on this evidence he will need to change tack if he is to be sure of getting there: this effort lasted well over 3½ hours, which earlier in the season would have been ample time to reach three figures. Instead, he spent 91 balls yesterday fretting over 23 runs and hit just two more fours – one of them when Andre Adams pushed the ball over the third-man rope after dropping a swirling chance as Ramprakash miscued an upper-cut off Charlie Shreck.

The end came in the third over of the session after lunch, the ball after Ramprakash had square-driven Pattinson for four - his one moment of genuine authority. “Pressure,” intoned Geoff Boycott, commentating on BBC radio as news filtered through to the Test match at Lord’s. “That was his problem in Test cricket.”

Pattinson, the 29-year-old Grimsby-born seamer who learnt his trade in Australia but was recently named in England’s provisional 30-man squad for the Champions Trophy, had earlier nipped one back to defeat Jon Batty in the fourth over of the day and now had all four wickets to fall in a Surrey total of 135. However, Usman Afzaal underlined why he is Surrey’s leading runscorer in the championship this season with an attractive 89 full of cuts and pulls before missing an ugly hoick at Shreck, and it was left to the 21-year-old Matthew Spriegel, a tall left-hander, to carry on the good work.

His innings ended with a tame prod to short leg off Graeme Swann, but not before he had completed a maiden first-class half-century. Chris Jordan did likewise, Saqlain Mushtaq smashed Adams over long-on and by the close Surrey had the first total of more than 350 at Trent Bridge this season. Right now, some of their batsmen are coping better than others.