Alviro Petersen did his best to anchor Lancashire’s innings before he fell four runs short of a fifty against Surrey in a rain-hit English County Championship match at the Oval on Tuesday.

He came to the crease with the score on 8-1, which soon turned into 9-2. But he and Ashwell Prince put on 46 in 12 overs, when Prince was lbw to Tom Curran for 20. Perhaps Prince had other things on his mind… like being included on the selection panel for the Proteas, which was announced on Tuesday night.

Petersen soldiered on with Steve Croft (21) until he was fifth out with the score on 102. It was schools day at the Oval, so at least he had an appreciative audience. At the close, Lancashire were 342-8 and looking at a draw.

Surrey owed their impressive first innings total to Jason Roy, who, by all accounts, is thrusting himself into the England spotlight.

He has always been regarded as a a loose cannon in the T20 and one-day forms, but now he hitting the headlines more often in first-class, but with the same style as his one-day performances: big and bold. After making his one-day debut against Ireland, he has been named in the one-day squad to face New Zealand.

But that was Roy’s finest innings in first-class cricket yet. It was his highest score to boot, surpassing his previous best set a fortnight ago at Northampton. Arriving at 74-4, Roy departed having made 143 of the 236 added with Steven Davies.

Roy’s first-class batting is imbued with self-belief and a refusal to over-complicate.’ ‘When I’m batting I’ve got no real plan of what I want to do, I just bat.’

Elsewhere, Rikki Wessels contributed 26 off 21 balls to Notts’ second innings of 228-7 as they built a formidable lead of 294 over Sussex at Trent Bridge.

Compiled by Mark Salter