Joyce and Arif deny Lancashire victory

Sussex 290 and 459 for 9 drew with Lancashire 590
Scorecard

Ed Joyce and Naved Arif both scored centuries as Sussex batted through the final day to save their County Championship Division One game with Lancashire at Hove.

Opener Joyce batted for 98 overs for his 140 runs but when he was eighth out on the stroke of tea Sussex only led by 66.

Amjad Khan fell for the addition of just three more runs but Pakistan-born Arif, who is English qualified because of his Danish wife, made a maiden century in only his second Championship game, adding an unbeaten 90 for the last wicket with Monty Panesar.

There were 10 overs left when the players shook hands after Arif, 29, had gone to his hundred by sweeping Steven Croft for four. Sussex closed on 455 for 9, a lead of 155.

Lancashire's hopes of a claiming their third successive win were not helped when former England seamer Sajid Mahmood had to be taken out of the attack for bowling his second beamer of the innings at Joyce just after Lancashire had taken the second new ball.

With skipper Glen Chapple struggling because of a sore ankle and forced to cut his run-up, Lancashire lacked penetration on a flat pitch which offered very little for the bowlers apart from some slow turn for left-arm spinner Gary Keedy, who bowled 55 overs and took four wickets but conceded 200 runs.

The visitors had looked on course when they took four wickets in seven overs at the start of the day. Having added 169 for the first wicket with Joyce, Chris Nash was bowled by Chapple's inswinger and three balls later Luke Wells edged to slip.

Murray Goodwin, who had made 113 in the first innings, was deceived in the flight as he came down the pitch to Keedy, while Ben Brown was beaten by Stephen Moore's throw from cover after Joyce rightly sent him back when he looked for a single to get off the mark.

Mahmood's inswinger accounted for Luke Wright but Joyce found two useful allies during the afternoon session to lead the lower-order resistance. He added 43 in 15 overs with Andrew Hodd and 56 in 10 with Rana Naved, whose boisterous 32 included two sixes.

Joyce, who reached the 25th hundred of his career with a boundary off Mahmood, was dropped on 104 by Peter Horton at slip and had moved onto 140 when occasional off-spinner Croft got a delivery to turn and bounce and Joyce edged to slip. The Irishman had batted for nearly six-and-a-half hours, faced 256 balls and hit 13 fours and a six.

His departure seemed to signal the end of Sussex's resistance and Arif was on 32 when he was joined by Panesar. But mixing watchful defence with some bold hitting against the spinners, Arif dominated a last-wicket alliance of 90 in 24 overs - hitting four sixes over the short pavilion-side boundary and eight fours as he made exactly a hundred off 130 balls.