Sussex 277 & 259 Notts 251 & 212: Collymore swings Sussex to victory after Prior makes Test case

Outstanding bowling from the former West Indies seamer Corey Collymore ended Nottinghamshire's hopes of pulling off an unlikely victory here yesterday as defending First Division champions Sussex belatedly opened their Championship win account.

Collymore has ended his international career by joining Sussex on a one-year contract as a Kolpak player and if his eight-wicket performance here – including three of the five to fall yesterday morning as Nottinghamshire, chasing 286 to win, subsided to 212 – is a pointer then he is a shrewd signing.

Yet it was their other match-winner, Matt Prior, who earned an endorsement from the Sussex captain, Chris Adams, who believes his wicketkeeper-batsman is a better player for having been dropped by England and is already pushing to be recalled, either with the gloves or as a batsman alone.

With 131 in the first innings and 64 in the second, Prior was the only batsman to properly conquer a difficult pitch. "He is playing with such quality he could go in at five or six as a batsman alone," Adams said. "But I know he believes he has qualities with the gloves that will only improve and he has come back to us from England as a better player.

"He is always learning. He has taken things here, for instance, from watching Chris Read in action for Notts and on Thursday evening he kept as well as I have seen him keep.

"He knows that to maintain that standard he has to work really, really hard but I would back him to get back in the England side."

Still 171 behind and five wickets down when they resumed yesterday, Nottinghamshire's chance was always tenuous and, although Read and Graeme Swann extended their partnership to 78, once Read had fallen, caught at short-leg, to a googly from a still occasionally devastating Mushtaq Ahmed, they fell away. Collymore had Swann, Mark Ealham and Charlie Shreck caught in the slips, and only an unbeaten 30 from Paul Franks held Sussex up.