THIS lovely, treelined ground in Croydon is not the kind of place where you would expect to find a relegation dogfight but then Surrey and Lancashire are not the kind of teams you expect to see scrapping it out for survival in the first division. That it has come to this for these two proud counties is down to injuries as much as anything else and it was no coincidence that Surrey were quick to seize the initiative on the day that the admirable Martin Bicknell returned for his first championship match since June.

Surrey had scored 693 to set up an innings victory over Nottinghamshire when championship cricket first came to Whitgift last year, but if Carl Hooper, captaining Lancashire because Warren Hegg is injured, was expecting a placid pitch he was mistaken. Bicknell soon had Mark Chilton caught at first slip with a ball that left him and Jimmy Ormond confounded Iain Sutcliffe with one that pitched around middle-and-leg and hit the top of the off stump.

When Ormond had Jamie Haynes caught behind and Bicknell took a sharp return catch from Dinesh Mongia, Lancashire had slumped to 21 for four. Hooper sabotaged his own attempt to repair the damage by getting a bottom edge into his stumps off Azhar Mahmood and it was left to Chris Schofield to frustrate Surrey with a typically eccentric 69 off 103 balls.

He was dropped at square leg and second slip and Surrey were beginning to fret when he and Glen Chapple were putting on 71 for the sixth wicket. Then Bicknell had Chapple caught at slip, Azhar cleaned up the tail and Surrey set about pressing home their advantage.

Richard Clinton did not get very far but Scott Newman had made 61 before being stumped off Gary Keedy and, ominously for Lancashire, Mark Ramprakash, who scored 279 not out here last year and has hit four hundreds in his past six championship innings, is still at the crease on 55.