Law rules, but Sussex stay in touch

Sussex 195 and 51 for 0 trail Lancashire 335 (Law 171, Mushtaq 4-88) by 89 runs
Scorecard

Stuart Law: his driving off the front foot and back was exquisite, his timing majestic, his placement perfect © Getty Images

Championship cricket at its best graced Hove today - and despite encountering Stuart Law in consummate and immoveable touch, Sussex are still in with a shout in this enthralling game. By the close they lay 89 behind with all ten second-innings wickets left.

After the gun-metal skies of Wednesday - and the sort of mediocre batting performance that Sussex just didn't deal in during their golden 2003 - the County Ground wore a far sunnier aspect. A decent crowd had more need of sunhats than balaclavas, the blossom around the ground had burgeoned overnight, and seagulls wheeled noisily on a perfect spring morning. More importantly for the spectators, Sussex claimed an early wicket when Robin Martin-Jenkins found enough awayswing to pass the edge of Mal Loye's bat and clatter into his off stump.

Iain Sutcliffe and Stuart Law had few opportunites to score, but on a pitch without yesterday's venom - not that there had been that much - they soon settled to the task of acquiring runs. Well though the Sussex seamers bowled, a wicket looked an age away. But then Kevin Innes conjured a fine slower ball to deceive Sutcliffe, give Sussex a toe-hold on the game, and reduce Lancashire to 120 for 3.

This brought together the powerhouse of Lancashire batting: between them Carl Hooper and Law have 72 years, a deep mine of experience and approaching 45,000 first-class runs. Of late, Law has developed a taste for the Sussex attack. At Essex, he never managed a hundred against them, but since moving to Manchester, he's hardly missed out. Coming into this game, he already had three to his name.

Over the next couple of hours, he and Hooper - slowly at first, but with increasing fluency - chipped away at the Sussex total. Nine overs after lunch, Lancashire moved into the lead. But Mushtaq Ahmed, fairly pedestrian in his first few overs, began to trouble Hooper, eventually having him caught off bat and pad for 34.

The powerhouse had added 109 in 31 overs, and even now, at 229 for 4, a lead of 200-plus looked on. Law was imperious. Nothing unsettled him, not even the regular traipse back to the pavilion of his partners. Glen Chapple held on long enough to share a stand of 57 (his contribution was 10) and help Law to a hundred containing neither alarm nor excursion. He was strong all round the wicket, his driving off the front foot and back was exquisite, his timing majestic, his placement perfect.

As an indication of just how easy the county game is for Law, this was his seventh century in 14 Championship innings. Not that he was finished: despite a mid-innings collapse in which four Lancashire batsmen fell for six runs - including yesterday's hero Dominic Cork first ball - Law moved serenely onwards. An unbeaten 171 (from 246 balls and with 22 fours and a six) took his Sussex spree in just over two years to 847 at an average of 211.

David Graveney, England's chairman of selectors, was presumably not here to be reminded of Law's magisterial talent, but he has applied for British nationality. He may be 35, but just now his form is irresistible. Without him, Lancashire would have been facing a deficit, rather than a lead of 140.

Keeping the arrears within manageable proportions was something of a moral victory for Sussex, who as so often had Mushtaq to thank. His potent mixture of variations proved too much for a bemused tail. The openers whittled the deficit down - and against all expectations, Sussex are still in this game.