Surrey’s faint hopes of retaining the Benson and Hedges Cup were dashed when Essex overcame the star-studded outfit with 28 balls to spare at Chelmsford yesterday. It was the visitors’ third successive one-day defeat and means that, despite winning the competition last year, they have now lost twelve of their last twenty-three matches in 50-overs cricket.

More significantly, if Adam Hollioake is to return and lead the county to any of this season’s four major honours, it will not be the one his younger brother Ben carried them to twice and in such majestic fashion during his unjustly brief career.

The reason for the Surrey’s demise on this occasion was two-fold. After having Essex eight for two in the fifth over, the visitors were incapable of finishing off their opponents - a potentially worrying development in terms of the championship, which also came on top of managing just 31 runs in the final eleven overs.

It was a day for left-handers. After taking three catches with the gloves, Andy Flower won the Benson and Hedges gold award for a superb 98 fashioned in 114 balls. The Zimbabwean fully deserved a century, which he would almost certainly have reached had Essex not required three to win with one ball of the 44th over remaining.

Mark Butcher (62 off 60 balls), another southpaw, was just shy of being Surrey’s top scorer. That honour went to Mark Ramprakash whose unbeaten 70 in 91 deliveries took 130 minutes and contained five fours; the first of which - a fortuitous outside edge - came after the former Middlesex man had been in for nearly half an hour.

It was a different game until Butcher decided to advance down the wicket and drive the ball back to Paul Grayson. The stand-in captain’s half-century took just 42 balls and included three boundaries in one over from Ashley Cowan.

His departure precipitated the loss of Alistair Brown and Nadeem Shahid to the second and fourth deliveries of Ronnie Irani’s next spell. Brown lobbed a catch to deep mid-off before Shahid played around one angled in on off stump. The silly thing is the Essex skipper had only brought himself back on because Jon Dakin was forced to leave the field.

Ian Ward went to leg-side catch off the impressive-looking Andy Clarke in the 30th over, after which the visitors registered just one more boundary.

Surrey were probably on top when Graham Napier (41 off 36 balls) went to a top-edged pull soon after the end of the fielding restrictions. But if Martin Bicknell had taken an elevated caught and bowled chance when Napier was on 24, maybe things would have turned out differently.

But Bicknell - who returned from injury in place of James Ormond - was hardly to blame for the final outcome. Had the visitors won, his three for 24 off ten overs may well have earned him the man of the match nomination instead of it going to Andy Fowler!

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