Darren Stevens played his way into form and helped Kent take a step closer to next month's Friends Provident Trophy quarter-finals by hitting his maiden one-day ton for Kent in their 17-run win over Surrey.

Stevens with 119 and Martin van Jaarsveld with 113 made the most of a superb St Lawrence batting strip to help Kent to a mammoth 337-3, which just proved enough to hold off Surrey.

Stevens said: "It was just nice to get a few runs and feel the ball hitting the middle of the bat again really.

"I'm pleased because it was just the sort of knock we needed. It was a decent pitch and I needed to get myself in.

"It was a good situation to go in, so my first aim was to bat time and then take it from there once I'd truly played myself in."

But Stevens says a stunning 138 from Brown Caps' skipper Mark Butcher stole his limelight and almost won Surrey the game.

He added: "Mark was awesome, so much so that we said that we'd try and get him off strike and give him ones, but that didn't work well either because Usman Afzaal came in and also started playing well.

"Our heads started to drop because we felt it was slipping away a bit, but then 'Cooky' (Simon Cook) got Afzaal out, it was a catch I didn't really fancy down at deep square, and that got us ticking again.

"Had Butcher stayed until the end it might have been tough but the two boys at the end, Azhar and Yasir, bowled brilliantly at the end and saw us through."

Kent are next in action on Wednesday with the start of their LV Championship match against Somerset at Tunbridge Wells.