Tea Report: Nottinghamshire 251 v Sussex 277

Tea on the second day (Sussex won toss)

This is turning into a close battle, Nottinghamshire losing their last wicket at the scheduled tea time to concede Sussex a lead of 26 on first innings. They found it hard going even to get that close against some decent bowling from the champions.

Nottinghamshire had put on 129 for the third and fourth wickets but once Adam Voges and Mark Wagh had gone in the later stages of the morning session, neither able to build substantially on a half-century apiece, they had to grind out the runs.

The Samit Patel-Chris Read partnership was probably their best hope of building a lead but Patel was leg before as Robin Martin-Jenkins nipped one back into his pads and Read, going back, was pinned by Luke Wright, who sent down a lively spell at the pavilion end. Wright should have had Graeme Swann for 12, let down by his skipper, Chris Adams, who spilled a routine catch at second slip.

The deserving Martin-Jenkins, whose off-stump pine regularly beat the bat, claimed his third success when Mark Ealham dollied a leading edge to mid-off, but the pick of the Sussex bowlers was Corey Collymore, who found bounce and late movement to remove Paul Franks via a catch behind the stumps. Mushtaq Ahmed continued to look in need of some overs after his lay-off but still bowled Darren Pattinson with his wrong 'un, before Collymore (4-47) wrapped things up with the wicket of Swann, who was halfway back to the pavilion before a soaring, miscued drive dropped into the hands of Jason Lewry at mid-off.