NORTHAMPTON (first day of four; Surrey won toss): Surrey have scored 380 for six wickets against Northamptonshire

IT IS not being unkind either to the setting at Wantage Road, or to the quality of the other cricketers on show, to state that Mark Ramprakash was too good for the stage he graced yesterday. For elegance, footwork, balance, range and certainty of strokeplay, Ramprakash’s 161 would be difficult to better. Mostly, the ball was caressed and persuaded; throughout his innings, however, there were also regular demonstrations of sheer power.

Only Graeme Hick, of England-qualified batsmen still playing, has scored more than Ramprakash’s 70 first-class hundreds. It is not quite beyond the bounds of possibility, of course, that Ramprakash, who will be 35 in September, might be needed just one more time against Australia next summer — should an emergency occur. The second of his two Test centuries, against Australia at the Oval in 2001, remains another important exhibit in the Strange Case of Mark Ramprakash.

To all intents and purposes, however, Ramprakash’s international career is over and it remains to be seen whether the weight of his run-scoring at championship level can help to prevent Surrey, his adopted county, from dropping out of the first division. If Surrey are to escape the bottom three, you feel they must win here against the only team below them.

Ramprakash reached 1,000 runs in a season for the fourteenth time during his innings, which came from 262 balls and featured 19 beautiful fours and a straight six off Jason Brown. Scampering to beat Ben Phillips’s direct hit on the bowler’s stumps, when 66, was the closest he came to being denied a hundred.

A dry, slow surface, interesting spinners from the start, was given the all clear by David Hughes, the ECB pitch liaison officer, but still required care after Brown turned two off breaks sharply in his fourth over to leave Scott Newman stranded and bowl James Benning through the gate. Jon Batty, though, arrived at 57 for three to play the solid supporting role to Ramprakash’s masterclass in a stand of 180 that shaped the innings. Batty reached his half-century with a straight six off Graeme Swann that moved even Ramprakash to applause, but soon afterwards fell to a rush of blood.