KENT were made to follow-on at The Oval this morning after losing their last five wickets for 58 inside the opening 65 minutes of day three.

The visitors, as they have all season, were guilty of some pretty poor first innings batting of a decent Kennington pitch.

True enough, the ball has swung for most of the match, but Kent can offer little else by way of mitigation as they succumbed for 239 to concede a first innings lead of 240.

Home skipper Jon Batty took a record-equalling eight catches in the innings as Surrey’s swing trio of Rikki Clarke, Azhar Mahmood and Martin Bicknell continued to brush the outside edges with a variety of away-swingers.

The morning started badly for Kent when they lost Rob Key seven overs into the day and just 14 short of what would have been his fifth century of the season.

Pushing defensively he feathered a Bicknell away swinger to spark the loss of four wickets in the space of 20 balls.

On his championship debut Matt Dennington scored a scratchy 11 before losing his off stump to a Clarke off-cutter that also kept low.

Rob Ferley (0) followed Key’s lead by edging to Batty, but Niall O’Brien hung around to score a cameo 15 from 10 balls including a hooked six off Carke to take Kent to their sole batting bonus point.

The Surrey bowler duly went around the wicket though to have O’Brien caught at slip by Ali Brown.

With little to lose, Kent’s last wicket partners Amjad Khan (9 not out) and Mohammad Sami (5) went for their shots.

They added 19 before Sami edged another to Batty – to equal Steve Marsh’s world record for eight catches in an innings and a hundred in the same match set against Middlesex at Lord’s in 1991.

Things went from bad to worse for Kent when they lost the skipper David Fulton seven overs into their second innings.

Having looked untroubled in reaching 13, Fulton then clipped Azhar Mahmood’s first ball of the day into the hands of substitute fielder Chris Thompson at mid-wicket.

Key (33) and Ed Smith (10) saw it through to lunch at 56 for one, but Kent face the prospect of having to bat at least four more sessions in order to save themselves from an opening championship defeat of the summer.