HOVE

(Day one of four: Sussex won toss)

Yorkshire 84 for six

Lunch

Rain - on a day when just about everywhere else in the country has been dry - both delayed and interrupted the opening day of the Sussex/Yorkshire match. Relegation is the major threat facing both counties.

Sussex were unchanged, meaning no place again for Corey Collymore, despite his good performances this season in the four-day game.

Mohammad Sami certainly got some pace and bounce from the pitch after Chris Adams had put Yorkshire in to launch his last match as Sussex captain after eleven memorable seasons. The pitch is the same as the one used against Durham at the end of May when Steve Harmison completed a hat-trick and Sussex lost their Mushtaq-inspired aura of invincibility on their home ground.

It was the faithful Jason Lewry, however, who made the first breakthrough with a typical ball, a lethally late away-swinger to the promising young left-hander Adam Lyth that uprooted his off stump as he played forward. Andrew Gales responded with some forthright blows off Sami, including two fours hit in the air over short-leg and the slips.

It will be a pleasant change to see a match on a livelier pitch than is normal at Hove and the forecast is for dry weather from now onwards. Play should be possible an hour or so after lunch was taken early at 12.30.

Tea

More dark clouds created widespread frustration, not least for Sussex bowlers enjoying the life in the pitch. Batting became a stern struggle once Gale had gone, nine balls after the first weather break, aiming an over ambitious shot off the back foot against Mohammad Sami.

Robin Martin-Jenkins, although his line was not quite so tight as normal, was still causing some problems for the batsmens, getting some movement off the seam after taking over from Lewry up the hill from the Sea end.

Tony McGrath did his best to play himself in, but for a man who had scored a recent hundred he was tentative and it was not entirely a surprise when he nibbled at a length ball on his off stump and nicked it at knee height to first slip.

Jacques Rudolph, Yorkshire's player of the year, was more positive about getting forward and had made 15 when the umpires offered him the light after a mere 17 overs after lunch.

Close

Yorkshire ended the day precariously placed and a long way from gaining some of the batting points they will probably need if they are not to be relegated. It might have been different had Jacques Rudolph, incomparably their most accomplished batsman, held on to take advantage of what should be a sunnier day tomorrow, but he became the second of the slippery Mohammad Sami's three victims, two of them taken during a 15 over evening session during which an uncertain looking 57 for three became a more desperate 84 for six.

Three wickets fell, indeed, in the last four overs of a day reduced to a mere 38 overs in all by light rain and bad light. Rudolph, driving without really moving his feet, for once, got an inside edge to Sami, who promptly knocked back gerard Brophy's off stump with a beauty that left him late. At the other end Lewry swiftly followed up by curving an inswinger into the boot of the tall night watchman Steve Patterson.