Tufnell renews Middlesex's ambitions

With the end result of a modest first innings lead secured, Sussex spent much of this day doing little more than trying to grind and claw its way on top of Middlesex in the teams' willing County Championship struggle at Southgate. Their slightly more resourceful opponents, meanwhile, used the occasion first to prevent this deficit from extending to hefty proportions and then to launch a spirited second innings assault on the back of the efforts of its best two batsmen.

Aside from three forceful cuts from Michael Bevan in the opening over of the day, this was predominantly an occasion for the steady accumulation of runs. The ray of hope offered by the Australian was dimmed in the second over when Phil Tufnell (4/88) lured him out of his crease to have him stumped; ended with Middlesex grimly preserving its remaining seven second innings wickets; and generally offered little in the way of attacking shotmaking in between.

For an action-filled day to have eventuated, the best prospects lay in the emergence of substantial contributions to the Sussex first innings from either of their two premier batsmen, Bevan and Chris Adams. That pair scored just thirty runs between them though, they were both gone early in proceedings, and the die was cast. The pitch, and the probing turn and flight extracted by Tufnell in foty tight overs, rendered scoring difficult and Sussex's batsmen in particular exhibited little willingness to dominate at any stage. Robin Martin-Jenkins (44) and Tony Cottey (42) emerged as their mainstays in a generally disappointing performance.

When Middlesex's turn came, strokeplay was slightly more abundant, and it was their captain, Justin Langer (48), who was chiefly responsible for the turnaround. Before playing one lofted on drive too many, he gained good support first from Mike Roseberry (28) and then his team's other main star with the bat, Mark Ramprakash (27*), as they worked hard to overcome the early departure of Andrew Strauss (3) and lift the score to 125/3 by the close. As for Tufnell, the reward for his control today came in the form of the wickets of James Kirtley (21), Bevan (30) and Adams (0). It was a heartening exhibition and one which breathed some life into the home team's ambitions of clawing its way off the bottom of the Division Two table. In its favour too, of course, is the fact that the Southgate pitch is showing marked signs of increasingly yielding to spin. Chasing a decent fourth innings target - no matter its exact dimension - is unlikely to be an easy proposition.