A VIOLENT assault in the NW8 area yesterday evening left locals battered and bruised and one unfortunate resident with a smashed car window. MCC is looking for one Alistair Brown, a well-known South London hard man.

They should have little trouble identifying him. About 23,000 saw Middlesex beaten to a pulp by skilled assailants, who swaggered back across the river with a fifth consecutive victory over Middlesex in the Twenty20 and barely a scratch. Players jogging off a bench to the right of the pavilion, men in suits fresh from the City, touts outside St John’s Wood station and Father Time almost knocked off his pedestal by Brown. It could only mean that Twenty20 was back at Lord’s and Surrey were upstaging Middlesex again.

After a brutal 83 in 38 balls from Brown, the highest score by a Surrey batsman in this competition, Middlesex looked dead in the water.

When Middlesex lost two wickets off the first two balls of their reply — Ed Smith getting a leading edge to point and the promoted Chad Keegan picking up to deep backward square — it was Lombard Street to a China orange.

When Owais Shah, the leading batsman in the competition last season, was bowled in the next over and Nick Compton caught at slip in the third, severe embarrassment seemed the only likely outcome.

Eoin Morgan, making his Twenty20 debut, made sure it was not. The 20-year-old left-hander made a splendid 66 off 41 balls and led a charge ably supported by Scott Styris, his captain. Together they put on 106 in 62 balls, keeping thoughts of an unlikely victory alive. But when Styris drove Nayan Doshi to Brown at long-off, 100 runs were needed off 7.3 overs and Morgan could not keep pace.

Lord’s had filled considerably by 6pm, half an hour after the start, but was not as packed as for a Test or as for the previous two record-breaking Twenty20 matches. That probably had something to do with the staging of a second game here for the first time, on Friday against Kent. It was still a huge crowd, though, for a county match.

One element was consistent; the disdain of the members for this form of the game. The pavilion was a graveyard. Perhaps they should open it up.

Members missed one of the more extraordinary sixes the ground has seen from Brown, who struck six of them. The pitch was towards the edge of the square near the Tavern Stand, but Brown’s hitting was prodigious. He peppered the first tier twice off Styris and picked up a ball from Keegan off his legs and out of the ground. It bounced twice on the Mound Stand’s tented roof and on to a car window.

Brown put on a Surrey record of 148 for the first wicket with James Benning in just 12.3 overs. But Surrey, missing Mark Butcher, their captain, with a back injury, fell off record pace against the spinners after Benning was yorked by Johann Louw.