Beleaguered Sussex are poised to claim a morale-boosting first-round victory after day three of their County Championship clash with Leicestershire left the home side on the ropes.<\/p>\n
Chasing a fourth-innings target of 481 after Sussex were bowled out for 364 in their second innings, the 2025 Division Two champions were 125-5 at the close, still 355 in arrears.<\/p>\n
Eager to start with a win after beginning the season with a 12-point deficit imposed as a condition of an ECB cash bail-out, Sussex had Jack Carson (85) and Tom Price (73) to thank for keeping them in control, the pair sharing a stand of 119 for the seventh wicket. <\/p>\n
Rehan Ahmed and Ian Holland took three wickets each for the home side.<\/p>\n
Leicestershire had hoped they might be chasing a fourth-innings target somewhat less daunting after picking up three wickets in the first 10 overs of the morning, leaving Sussex 182-6, only for Carson and Price to re-establish their side’s superiority.<\/p>\n
Ben Green had struck in his second over, a lovely delivery that hit the top of off stump to remove the threat of James Coles. Green picked up a second as Stephen Eskinazi held a good catch at second slip to dismiss Jack Leaning, who added just six to his first-innings 13 on debut.<\/p>\n
With the departure of John Simpson in the next over, Holland winning a perhaps generous lbw decision, Sussex’s lead stood at 298, a decent advantage but small enough for Leicestershire to consider themselves in the game.<\/p>\n
With a depleted attack, though, it was an optimistic position they could not sustain, as Carson and Price responded with a partnership that underlined off-spinner Carson’s progress as a batter and consolidated the good impression already being made by Price following his move from Gloucestershire.<\/p>\n
The pair stretched the Sussex lead beyond 400. Carson, who made his maiden first-class century against Worcestershire last May, looked to have a second in his grasp, what’s more having walked out as nightwatchman on Saturday. Being denied by Rishi Patel, a part-time spinner, must have hurt.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, after facing 140 deliveries and hitting seven fours, he had ensured Sussex retained all the cards. And ex-Gloucestershire all-rounder Price swelled his debut match aggregate to 116 with an innings of 10 fours before pulling Holland to mid-wicket.<\/p>\n
With a lead already in excess of 450, a declaration at that point would have seemed reasonable. As it was, Robinson let the innings run its natural course. <\/p>\n
Ahmed picked up the last two wickets as Robinson was caught behind reverse-sweeping and Henry Crocombe stumped, leaving Fynn Hudson-Prentice not out on 34.<\/p>\n
After tea between innings, Leicestershire faced some full-on aggression, at least at the start of the 38 overs remaining in the day. <\/p>\n
Patel was dismissed by a sensational piece of fielding by Carson, who not only saved four on the slide on the long-leg boundary but capped it off by running out the opener with a direct hit on to the stumps as he went for a second.<\/p>\n
Before an hour had elapsed, Leicestershire were 52-4. Carson, into the attack after seven overs, had Holland well taken at short midwicket; Jake Weatherald launched Carson for six over long-on but was soon caught behind slashing at Crocombe, whose next ball dismissed Lewis Hill at third slip, last season’s leading Leicestershire run scorer bagging a pair.<\/p>\n
Eskinazi and Ahmed stemmed the flow of wickets for 10 overs before Ahmed, having moments earlier survived a difficult caught-and-bowled chance off the same bowler, injudiciously gave James Coles the charge and was stumped.<\/p>\n
Assisted now by Ben Cox, Eskinazi plotted a route to the close with no further mishap, although Cox, on 16, survived a chance to second slip off Carson.<\/p>\n
Report supplied by the ECB Reporters’ Network, supported by Rothesay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beleaguered Sussex are poised to claim a morale-boosting first-round victory after day three of their County Championship clash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-515030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}