STEVE RIXON has a tougher job on his hands than he expected when he agreed to become the new Surrey coach. The uncompromising Australian was used to success with New South Wales and New Zealand and he was looking forward to savouring more with the side that had won six trophies in five years.

These are early days, of course, but some of his players may soon find out how uncompromising he is. They had started their championship programme by having the worse of a draw with Sussex and then losing to Middlesex and yesterday they began their defence of the totesport League title with an abject performance against Glamorgan.

“For now,” Rixon had written in the match programme, “I think it’s a case of me watching them do what they’re good at, then maybe in the weeks and months ahead I might have a few ideas on how they can improve their game further still.”

It was a fond thought. They have not been very good at anything so far this season and after seeing Glamorgan thrash them with more than 22 overs to spare, he has days rather than weeks and months to come up with a few ideas to revitalise them.

There are mitigating circumstances. The side was clearly destabilised by the change in captain and coach when Adam Hollioake resigned and Keith Medlycott left at the end of last season, the retirement of Alec Stewart and the departure of Ian Ward to Sussex.

On top of that, they have lost Martin Bicknell, their most consistent bowler, with a hamstring strain, and Mark Butcher and Graham Thorpe, their centrally-contracted England batsmen, are resting.

None of that, however, explains Surrey’s feeble exhibition yesterday when they collapsed to 36 for seven and were grateful to Ian Salisbury for lifting them to a modest 146 with his first fifty in 185 one-day matches.

The ball did swing but there were some poor strokes as well, as Michael Kasprowicz took three for 23 in his opening spell and Andrew Davies did even better, claiming four for 13 in 18 balls with a bewildering mixture of wicket-taking balls, eight wides and a no-ball.

Alistair Brown, one of three batsmen who apparently preferred to remain anonymous since they had neither name nor number on their shirts, was caught behind in Kasprowicz’s first over and Mark Ramprakash lost his middle stump to a swinging full toss in Davies’s third.

Davies went on to remove James Benning, Hollioake and Azhar Mahmood and Kasprowicz did for Scott Newman and Jonathan Batty, who looks like a beleaguered captain already, before Salisbury and Saqlain Mushtaq stopped the rot.

They had put on 64 in 18 overs, taking Surrey past their previous lowest one-day score of 64 against Worcestershire in the league in 1978, when Saqlain was bowled by Robert Croft’s first ball, leaving Tim Murtagh to help to raise another 43 for the last wicket.

Azhar Mahmood then gave Surrey a glimmer of hope by removing Croft and Alex Wharf in his first two overs but Matthew Elliott, showing why Australia have just given him a new contract, and Michael Powell, who thrashed 64 off 40 balls with 14 fours, soon put them out of their misery with a third-wicket partnership of 124 in 17 overs.