Yorkshire frustrated as missed chances halt chase

For it was here almost exactly four years ago that Hoggard took a hat-trick in his final away game for Yorkshire, dismissing Andrew Hodd, Dwayne Smith and Piyush Chawla to help seal a win that kept Yorkshire in Division One.

Yorkshire are scrapping at the right end of the table this time and, after strengthening their title ambitions by reducing Sussex to 164-7 after winning the toss, what they would have given for another hat-trick yesterday to wrap up the innings in double-quick time.

Instead, the last three wickets posted 112 with power to add as Sussex rallied to 276-9 before bad light ended play with 20 overs remaining.

Ben Brown, the 24-year-old wicketkeeper, who scored the last of his four first-class centuries against Yorkshire at Scarborough two years ago, led the fightback with an unbeaten 78 from 153 balls with nine fours.

Brown was dropped on 14 by Adam Lyth at second slip off Steve Patterson and survived a stumping chance to Jonny Bairstow off Adil Rashid when 74, making the most of his opportunities.

Brown batted Sussex back into the match and, in the process, helped them gain two batting points.

Yorkshire, who claimed the maximum three bowling points to reduce to 11.5 points the gap between themselves and leaders Durham, who managed only one Derbyshire wicket for 99 runs on a rainy day in the East Midlands, paid for their mistakes but could still be reasonably pleased with their efforts.

“At the start of the day, if you said that we’d be in this position, I think we’d have taken that,” said first-team coach Jason Gillespie.

“It was an interesting day, and I thought we bowled well in periods as a team, but Brown showed that if you apply yourself, and put a price on your wicket, you can not only survive on that pitch but score runs too.

“I thought we were a bit flat in the hour before tea; we probably let ourselves down a little bit and took our foot off the gas, and there were a couple of chances that went begging. But, overall, I thought we did well.”

Unchanged following their seven-wicket defeat against Durham at Scarborough, Yorkshire made an up-and-down start in sunny conditions.

Seven boundaries arrived in the first seven overs – five of them to Chris Nash, who picked off a number of half volleys as Yorkshire took time to find their stride.

Although the visitors were never at their absolute best in the morning session, not helped by a howling gale that blew diagonally across the ground from the west towards the English Channel, they took regular wickets on a green-looking pitch.

The first of them fell to the penultimate ball of the sixth over and rather set the tone for what was to follow, Luke Wells pushing tentatively at a delivery from Jack Brooks and edging to Lyth at second slip.

Bowling from the Sea End looked particularly tough work, what with the wind and uphill slope, and after Ryan Sidebottom and Patterson initially laboured in vain, it was Liam Plunkett who ultimately built on Brooks’s breakthrough.

With the score on 58 in the 15th over, Nash was undone by a beautiful ball from Plunkett that bounced and left him, Nash doing well to edge it to Bairstow.

Plunkett pounced again with the total on 79 when he induced Michael Yardy to chop into his stumps, the batsman mis-timing an attempted back foot forcing shot through the covers.

When Ed Joyce moved too far across his wicket in the next over and was bowled around his legs by Sidebottom, Sussex were 84-4 and in palpable difficulty.

Rory Hamilton-Brown attempted to hit them out of trouble and initially succeeded as he punched Plunkett to the cover boundary and then lofted Kane Williamson for two leg-side sixes.

But Williamson got his revenge moments before lunch, Hamilton-Brown bowled pushing forward to the New Zealander, whose second string off-spin should not be underestimated.

Patterson bowled well after the break and was rewarded when he sent Matt Prior’s off stump flying, while Sidebottom claimed his second wicket of the day when he trapped Ashar Zaidi lbw.

Zaidi, a 32-year-old playing his first first-class match for almost four years, has been plucked from the obscurity of Lancashire league cricket with Accrington, a transition highlighted by the fact that there was no name on his shirt and that his pads looked too big for him.

Lyth’s reprieve of Brown was costly, for that would have left Sussex 164-8 and unlikely to have managed a single batting point.

As it was, Brown and Steve Magoffin added 74 for the eighth wicket in 26 overs before Sidebottom had Magoffin caught behind off a very wide ball, Williamson claiming the ninth wicket when he yorked James Anyon.