Kent v Surrey

Spitfires snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in clinching a narrow 17-run Friends Provident Trophy win over Surrey in the highest scoring one-day game ever to be played at St Lawrence.

Having posted a seemingly invincible 337-3 from their 50 overs Kent were short-priced favourites to post their fifth successive South East Division win, until former England batsman and Brown Caps’ skipper Mark Butcher played his best one-day innings for the county to leave the tie in the balance.

In the end though, Surrey lost their last seven wickets for 27 runs as Kent came back from the death to edge closer to next month's quarter-finals.

Surrey posted 70 for their first wicket before James Benning (23) heaved across the line to Ryan McLaren, then Mark Ramprakash (10) snicked a drive off the same bowler to go to a catch behind the wicket.

Butcher teamed up with Usman Afzal (74) to add 126 for the third wicket inside 17 overs and changed the context of the game completely.

Butcher cantered to his century from 85 balls with 13 fours to take his side to the brink of a memorable win until the wheels fell off big time.

Afzal clipped an innocuous ball to deep mid-wicket to be caught by Darren Stevens then, with his score on 139, Butcher made room to force McLaren through the off side only to be bowled.

Kent, for the first time in over an hour, now fancied their chances and it was the ‘death’ bowling of Yasir Arafat and Azhar Mahmood, against his former county that helped complete the turn around.

Jonathan Batty (4) clipped a Mahmood slower ball to cover then Arafat plucked out Ali Brown’s leg stump with a yorker to send him packing for 38.

With 25 needed from the last three overs Matt Nicholson was bowled heaving across another Mahmood slower ball then Neil Saker, similarly fooled by the ‘back of the hand ball’ sliced a catch to point.

Fittingly, Mahmood finished it off by having Chris Jordan caught at long off to finish with excellent figures of 4-40 and secure the victory with two balls to spare.

Earlier, a stunning, unbroken fourth-wicket record stand of 216 between centurions Darren Stevens and Martin van Jaarsveld had seemingly put Kent firmly into the driving seat.

Batting first after being invited to, Spitfires added 67 for the first wicket before Rob Key (34) and Joe Denly (46) fell in quick succession.

Key went when clipping to deep square-leg off Chris Jordan then Denly played outside the line to an off-cutter to lose his middle stump and make it 99-2.

Justin Kemp then suffered his first poor return of the season when, with his score on six, he aimed to cut Jordan only to edge the ball onto his own off stump and give Jordan decent figures of 3-53.

Kent sprinted on thereafter though, as van Jaarsveld posted his third ton of the Trophy campaign and Stevens added his first in a spectacular stand that took the game away from Surrey.

Stevens reached three-figures from only 67 balls with 10 fours and a brace of sixes, while van Jaarsveld took 101 balls and scored only nine fours as they broke the fourth-wicket record stand for Kent in all one-day cricket of 170 held by Matt Walker and Andrew Symonds against Lancashire in 2004 at Tunbridge Wells.

With 657 runs scored in the day, this beat the previous record of 610 for the aggregate runs in a one-day game at St Lawrence and became the second highest run feast in the history of Kent limited overs games anywhere.