ONE very good partnership and one moment of wretched ill fortune kept Derbyshire in touching distance in the first innings of their LV County Championship match against Surrey at Queen's Park.

The partnership was a stand of 137 between Wayne Madsen and Lee Goddard which hauled the home side out of the mire after they had slumped to 81-6 in reply to Surrey's 391 all out.

Even with the benefit of that stand, Derbyshire were still scuppered out for 237, conceding a lead of 154, but they may not have been able to achieve even that level of relative respectability had it not been for Tim Linley's bad luck.

Surrey right-arm seamer Linley had Derbyshire in terrible trouble at the beginning of their reply by taking four wickets in a score of 59-5 an over after lunch.

He did not take the new ball but replaced Chris Tremlett after only one over from the Lake End. It seemed a strange move at the time but proved to be precisely the right one.

Linley's first 10 overs brought him 4-13 but, two balls into his 11th, he pulled up midway through his run-up and was clearly in a lot of pain. The problem was a ligament on the bottom of his foot and the prognosis is that he will not bowl again in this match.

Though that was not the way Derbyshire would have preferred to see off Linley, they were relieved at his exit.

It did not take them long to finish off the Surrey innings, though the last pair added another 27 when Linley was caught at slip in the fourth over of the day to give Steffan Jones his fourth wicket.

But the problems did not take long to mount. Chris Rogers' back-foot drive was caught at point and the captain was out for 14 at 18-1, then Linley took command by having Garry Park and Chesney Hughes caught behind and by clean bowling Greg Smith and Wes Durston.

Though he is nowhere near as tall as his bowling partners Tremlett and Andre Nel, the 28-year-old drew a good amount of bounce from the wicket and just enough movement to bother everyone in a very impressive spell.

But Madsen survived to give Derbyshire some hope of salvation and, together with Goddard, they started the recovery.

Madsen needed to be watchful early on and remained cautious all the way to his first 50, which came off 110 balls with nine fours, but after a lean patch of only 77 runs in his last seven Championship innings, that was especially understandable.

Goddard was more aggressive and completed the first half-century of his second Derbyshire spell in 60 balls with six fours. It was a good knock and a precious partnership but the end came rather too suddenly.

Having taken the score to 218-6, the last four wickets fell for 19, three of them to off-spinner Gareth Batty.

Madsen's confidence soared as he moved to his third century of the season, off 186 balls with 17 fours, but his option of a reverse sweep was not the right one at the time and he paid the price as the ball rolled off his glove to dislodge a bail.

Tom Lungley and Jones soon followed, then Goddard too fell to the reverse sweep for 67 and the innings was brought to a close.

Goddard took a good diving catch to dismiss Rory Hamilton-Brown off Tim Groenewald at 8-1 but Surrey were 50-1 at the close, ahead by 204.