SURREY cantered home to a comfortable seven-wicket win at The Oval as Kent surrendered their unbeaten status in the Frizzell Championship first division.

Rob Key anchored Kent’s second innings as the visitors followed-on 240 in arrears, but despite reaching a career-best 199 and spending 12 hours at the crease in the game, Key still finished on the losing side.

The England right-hander took his season’s tally to 893 runs before he fell soon after lunch on the final day.

Edging a tired drive to a Martin Bicknell out-swinger he gave Ali Brown a comfortable slip catch to make it 361 for seven.

Rob Ferley (4) and Martin Saggers (0) followed quickly, but the last wicket pair of Mohammad Sami (29) and Amjad Khan (22) showed some resolve in adding a quick 49 before Sami holed out to mid-off.

Earlier, Surrey seamer Martin Bicknell had claimed the 1000th wicket of his first-class career by having Matt Dennington, making his Kent championship debut, caught behind for 12.

Having been dismissed for 413, Kent set Surrey 174 to win off the remaining 47 overs of the match.

The hosts lost Nadeem Shahid (0) leg before in the second over of the reply, but Scott Newman (31) teamed up with Mark Ramprakash to ease the game away from Kent with a stand of 67.

Newman took three fours in Mohammad Sami’s opening over, but finally went to the occasional spin bowling of Michael Carberry.

Farcically, Kent ended the match trying to make good their dilatory over rate from the first innings in order to avoid being docked two-and-a-half bonus points.

With Carberry at one end and Matt Walker the other, Ramprakash (91 not out) and Jon Batty (18 not out) had little trouble picking off the runs required with 12 overs in hand to secure Surrey’s first championship win since August last year.

Surrey 22pts, Kent 4pts.