Austin provides home help

Lancashire 561-8 dec v Sussex 307 & 236 Lancs win by innings & 18 runs

It was a red-letter day for the red rose of Lancashire with a first Championship victory at Old Trafford for two years lifting them into the recently unexplored regions in the top half of the County table.

Heady stuff indeed, but after such a long wait between drinks it was only to be expected that there should be some slips between cup and lip and a few obstructions to be negotiated before the satisfaction of victory.

Having defied expectations by taking the game into a fourth day, there were times when Sussex threatened to delay the inevitable defeat deep into the afternoon, with the most surprising resistance coming from Mark Robinson.

Robinson, in his Northants and Yorkshire days, gloried in the title of the game's worst No 11, once going 12 innings without troubling the scorers.

In this match, however, he followed his career-best 27 in the first innings with a stubborn 75-minute occupation of the crease as he carried his nightwatchman's role towards lunch.

His second innings was starting to assume embarrassing proportions when Ian Austin, who had just removed Keith Greenfield, got Robinson out in the same way, lbw for 17.

Austin completed a thoroughly useful contribution, which included an unbeaten 77 with the bat and three cheap wickets in Sussex's first innings, by having Keith Newell caught and bowled off bat and pad.

Even after that, it was not altogether straightforward. Vasbert Drakes and Peter Moores looked likely at one stage to make Lancashire bat again, but Gary Yates then cleaned up the tail to finish with 5-59.

He had Drakes caught by Jason Gallian at silly point. Paul Jarvis then mistimed a drive to be snapped up by Graeme Lloyd and the long drought ended when Mike Atherton instinctively took Moores with a fine one-handed catch.