NOTHING is impossible when it comes to a run chase these days. Worcestershire proved that on Saturday by scoring 287 for eight in only 31.5 overs to beat Surrey by two wickets with one ball to spare in an amazing finish to their Liverpool Victoria County Championship second division match at the Brit Oval.

A first championship victory of the season appeared to be out of the question when Worcestershire began the day needing 38 runs to avoid the follow-on with four wickets in hand, but Steven Davies, their emerging wicketkeeper-batsman, got them to their initial target with an unbeaten 61 and set up an extraordinary afternoon’s cricket.

Vikram Solanki, the Worcestershire captain, promptly declared 148 runs behind and then allowed Surrey to plunder 136 for three from 8.2 overs before Mark Butcher, his Surrey counterpart, reciprocated by setting a target of 285 in 62 overs.

Thirty of those overs were to be lost when rain held up play for two hours, but by then Phil Jaques and Stephen Moore had taken such a heavy toll of Surrey’s slipshod bowling that they had raced to 95 off 52 balls and brought the requirement down to 190 off 23.2 overs.

Jaques, the Australia batsman, who was making his Worcestershire debut after his prolific seasons in county cricket with Northamptonshire and Yorkshire, went on to make 107 off 69 balls. Moore (57) joined him in an opening stand of 171 in 18 overs and Ben Smith kept up the momentum with an unbeaten 46 off 34 balls.

Worcestershire still needed four runs to win off two balls with only two wickets remaining when Zaheer Khan went in, but the India fast bowler clubbed his first ball from Nayan Doshi, the left-arm spinner, over mid-wicket for six to settle the issue.

It was hard on Doshi, who had taken six for 91 in Worcestershire’s first innings and finished with ten for 159 in the match, because it was Surrey’s quicker bowlers who were to blame for one of the most embarrassing defeats in their illustrious history.

Mohammad Akram went for 53 in six overs, Azhar Mahmood 79 in ten and Rikki Clarke, who has just been included in the England development squad, 22 in one.

Surrey’s largesse enabled Derbyshire to move to the top of the second division without bowling a ball at the County Ground, where they had to settle for a draw with Leicestershire after rain washed out the final day of a game that they had dominated in between the showers.

It means that they will have to wait another three weeks for the opportunity to win their first home championship game in four years, but David Houghton, their director of cricket, was not downhearted. “We played 160 overs in the game and we’ve been in charge for 150 of them,” he said, “But this does not dampen us in any way. Two of our batsmen got hundreds, another got a ninety and our bowlers have had a good workout, so I’m happy with the way we are playing.”