Yesterday, Adam Hollioake continued where he left off in the Cheltenham & Gloucester quarter-final - hitting the ball with the “ugly stick” as he would call it; yet hitting it extremely effectively, especially for a man with a chipped bone in the index finger of his left hand.

That Surrey narrowly avoided being asked to follow-on by Kent was due entirely to Hollioake’s first century in 49 championship innings (the last being the 116 he made at Lord’s at the end of 1999). The Surrey captain, who came in with the visitors struggling at 59 for five, struck an unbeaten 122 in 103 deliveries, including 14 fours and seven sixes. He has now passed fifty four times in four first-class innings this season and is scoring in excess of a run a ball in both forms of cricket.

With every likelihood that he wouldn’t have long, Hollioake served up even more of the ‘stand and deliver’ stuff he produced at Hove on Wednesday. He was off the mark right away, hitting three fours in one over from Amjad Khan and a six over long-on in the next, delivered by Martin Saggers, which unfortunately landed on an elderly lady sat in a wheelchair in the bottom section of the Frank Woolley Stand. The blow to her chest necessitated a visit to the Kent and Canterbury Hospital. But when the she returned, the lady was presented with the offending missile by Adam Hollioake, who signed it and also offered her his sincerest apologies.

She must have been equally sorry that she did to see the pyrotechnics that followed. Within an hour the Surrey captain had posted his half-century, in 54 deliveries, with a six over square leg off Mark Ealham, and 41 balls later he brought three-figures up with a bottom edge to fine leg.

After resuming at 20 for one, the visitors had lost three wickets in the space of 12 balls. Ian Salisbury, Surrey’s nightwatchman, got an inside edge on to leg stump; Mark Ramprakash was caught behind trying to work Saggers’s next ball to leg and Amjad Khan induced an outside edge from Rikki Clarke.

Apart from his skipper, Mark Butcher was the only Surrey batsman to reach double-figures and it took a stinging catch at slip by Fulton to see the back of the England left-hander. Alistair Brown was then undone for pace and Jonathan Batty ended 52 minutes of level-headedness with a loose cut to point. Even with Hollioake hitting three more sixes the visitors went into lunch with only an outside chance of staving off almost certain defeat.

After the break Saqlain Mushtaq made four before losing his off peg, as did James Ormond, who was clean bowled attempting to repeat the stroke that had brought him four runs the previous delivery. So, when Ed Giddins strode to the crease at 184 for nine something truly inspired was needed to hoist Surrey’s total up to the initial target of 244.

Adam Hollioake duly obliged by moving from ninety to 122 in just eight balls with a sequence that went 4-4-0-4-6-4-4-6. The follow-on was then avoided thanks to a no-ball from Khan, whereupon Giddins edged Martin Saggers to second slip.

Surrey briefly bowled themselves back into the match with the early wickets of David Fulton, who edged a drive to the keeper, and Ed Smith, whose mistimed pull found Ramprakash running back from mid-on. But then Robert Key and Andrew Symonds put on 97 in twenty overs. Symonds dominated, reaching his fifty in 52 deliveries with mostly front foot shots in the arc between backward point and wide mid-off, while Key remained relatively anonymous.

In the 28th over the Aussie all-rounder was caught at forward short leg to initiate another Kent collapse. Four overs later James Hockley worked the ball into the outstretched left hand of Ian Ward, in the same position. Then Paul Nixon top-edged a sweep to his counterpart before Mark Ealham had his leg stump uprooted when he tried to force Ian Salisbury over mid-off.

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