Pettini and Gallian flay Surrey

Essex captain Mark Pettini led from the front with 144

A limited-overs best of 144 from Mark Pettini and 117 from Jason Gallian put Essex Eagles on the road to a 156-run win over Surrey Brown Caps to maintain their unbeaten record in this season’s Friends Provident Trophy.

Jade Dernbach suffered the brunt of the mayhem, being despatched for 107 off his alotted ten overs.

Pettini’s innings helped Essex to 391 for five, their highest total in limited-overs cricket, too much for their hosts despite 98 from Mark Ramprakash.

Ramprakash’s knock got Surrey up to 189 from 31 overs but once he was lbw to David Masters, who also dismissed Ali Brown and Jon Batty cheaply, their hopes of an unlikely win had gone.

Masters finished with 5-17, a personal limited-overs best, as he mopped up the middle order to rubber-stamp Essex’s win.

Pettini hit 17 fours and two sixes in his 120-ball stay, and put on an opening stand of 269 with Gallian, a record for Essex against Surrey.

Gallian faced 116 balls, hitting 15 fours, but his batting was overshadowed by that of his opening partner.

Pettini, who bagged a pair against Middlesex in the LV County Championship last week, had one major slice of luck when on just one.

He nicked a Dernbach delivery but Jon Batty dropped a simple catch behind the stumps and the keeper spent the next two hours watching Pettini smash the bowling all over the place.

Pettini reached his second Friends Provident hundred of the season with a pushed single off Pedro Collins and soon passed his previous one-day best of 119, made against Kent three weeks ago.

The Essex captain and former England Under-19 player was in England’s provisional squad for last year’s World Twenty20 and he showed why the selectors have been keeping an eye on him with some punishing hitting.

He eventually perished attempting to cut Saqlain Mushtaq, whilst Gallian followed in the next over, chipping Matt Nicholson to Mark Butcher off a leading edge.

But the punishment continued for the Surrey bowlers, with South African Ryan ten Doeschate smashing 60 from 31 balls and James Foster hitting 46 from 23 deliveries as Essex added more than a hundred in the final 10 overs.

None of the Surrey attack was spared, with Dernbach conceding 107 from 10 overs, Nicholson 71 from 10 and Usman Afzaal 62 from seven.

After Andre Nel had induced a top edge from James Benning, Ramprakash and Scott Newman put on 94 for Surrey’s second wicket, with Ramprakash the dominant partner.

Newman was bowled by Graham Napier for 49 but the prolific Ramprakash moved closer to yet another century with ten fours and two sixes from 85 balls.

But he was trapped in front by Masters and Butcher fell to a brilliant stumping, down the leg-side, by Foster.

Afzaal hit 43 but received no support as wickets fell regularly at the other end.