Yorkshire edge towards win over leaders Sussex

Ben Coad is back in the Yorkshire side after injury

Vitality County Championship, Division Two, Scarborough (day three)

Sussex 189 & 239: Simpson 67, Alsop 61; Coad 5-69

Yorkshire 326: Luxton 59, Bairstow 57; Carson 5-83 & 28-2

Yorkshire (5pts) need 75 runs to beat Sussex (3pts) with eight wickets remaining

Match scorecard

Ben Coad took a five-wicket haul to move Yorkshire closer to victory over County Championship Division Two leaders Sussex at Scarborough.

Sussex started the day on 26-0 in their second innings, 111 runs behind the third-placed hosts, and were bowled out for 239 as seamer Coad returned figures of 5-69.

Yorkshire then finished day three on 28-2 and need 75 more runs to seal their third successive red-ball win.

Sussex were teetering at lunch against their promotion rivals after slipping to 66-3, still 71 runs in arrears, and their second defeat of 2024 looked like it might come quickly.

It became 84-4 when James Coles departed for 13, but Tom Alsop (61), with his second fifty of the match, and captain John Simpson (67) held things up with a fifth-wicket partnership of 85 which saw Sussex claim a lead.

By the time tea arrived, Sussex were 164-4, 27 runs ahead and Alsop had reached a 125-ball fifty.

Their partnership was closing in on three figures when Alsop looked to cut Dan Moriarty but was caught behind at the second attempt by Jonny Bairstow.

And when Fynn Hudson-Prentice was run out at the striker's end, having been sent back by Simpson, Sussex were 179-6 in the 78th over, leading by only 42 and with the new ball on the horizon.

That new ball worked immediately for Yorkshire, with Coad having Jack Carson caught behind for a duck.

At 188-7, the earlier good work of Alsop and Simpson was threatening to be undermined, and so it proved as Coad sent back Ollie Robinson – Bairstow's fourth catch of the day – and Jaydev Unadkat before bowling Simpson to wrap things up.

Unadkat and Robinson, respectively, had Finlay Bean and Jordan Thompson caught in the slips in the Yorkshire chase to give Sussex a glimmer of hope, but the home side remain favourites heading into the final day.

Report supplied by ECB Reporters' Network