Sussex triumph but fixtures washed out by heavy rains

Yasir Arafat returned to haunt former club Somerset with a five-wicket haul as Sussex ran out convincing winners in a rain-affected Royal London One-Day Cup tie at Taunton.

The Pakistan all-rounder, who played for Somerset in last season’s T20 competition, claimed figures of 5-36 – two wickets coming in the second over and the rest in the last – as the hosts were limited to 193-8 in a match reduced to 33 overs per side.

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Colin Ingram top-scored for Somerset with 72 while James Hildreth (42 not out) and Nick Compton (42) also made good contributions, but it was not enough to seriously challenge Sussex in the end.

The visitors chased down their revised target of 189 with four overs to spare to claim a seven-wicket win, with Matt Machan (47 not out), captain Ed Joyce (46no) and Luke Wright (42) doing most of the damage.

The victory was Sussex’s third in the competition, moving them up to fourth place in Group B and within a point of second-placed Somerset, who slumped to only their second loss.

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That was the only one of the six scheduled One-Day Cup matches to have a positive result yesterday as weather put paid to the other games.

The matches between Derbyshire and Essex, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Surrey, and Warwickshire and Kent were abandoned without a ball being bowled, while only 14 overs were possible in the other match between Durham and Middlesex at Chester-le-Street.

In that time, Durham progressed to 56-3 with captain Mark Stoneman unbeaten on 46.

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Toby Roland-Jones took two of the three wickets to fall, including that of England all-rounder Ben Stokes for a duck.

It was Essex’s second washout in three days and head coach Paul Grayson is hoping their next scheduled match at Yorkshire today will not go the same way.

He said: “It doesn’t help either team because Derbyshire wanted to play and we wanted to play and now we’ve got a big game at Scarborough (today).

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“We might have to win two out of the last three games to go through (to the quarter-finals.) It was the sensible decision by the umpires and I’ll be surprised if there is any cricket in the country (yesterday). It’s like a bog out there and two experienced umpires made an early call.

“I think nine points should get you through in the top four and although we’ve got three tough games, everyone seems to be beating everyone else in this division. We just hope we get better weather at Scarborough.”