Nash: Job is only half done

Chris Nash scored his first hundred of the season but will resume at Hove today knowing he has only done half the job.

The Sussex opener scored an unbeaten 111 but his side will need more of the same along with contributions from everyone else in a strong batting line-up if they are to pull off an unlikely Championship win over Somerset today.

Their hopes of successfully chasing 348 or more in the fourth innings for only the third time in their history suffered two blows in the last hour after Nash and Ed Joyce raised hopes with a third-wicket stand of 94 following the early departures of Mike Yardy and the luckless Murray Goodwin.

First Joyce, hampered by a hip problem which could need an injection today, was bowled off his pads by Peter Trego and then Matt Prior turned Max Waller’s googly straight into the hands of short leg.

The fact Nash has so far scored almost 60% of his side’s runs is an accurate reflection of how well he played on a typical Hove wicket when you never really feel ‘in’. So far he has hit 17 fours in 166 balls faced but admitted afterwards the boundary count would have been considerably slower had it not been for a quick outfield.

At the start of the day it looked like the best Sussex could hope for was one of those defiant last-innings rearguard actions which have become familiar at Hove in the last year or two.

Instead, they took the last nine Somerset wickets in 39 overs and rather than having to bat for four sessions to save the game they gave themselves 150 overs to score 348.

Piyush Chawla was again outstanding, taking 6-52 – the best figures by a Sussex bowler since Mushtaq Ahmed’s 7-132 in the final game of the 2007 season.

The 20-year-old has now taken 19 wickets in two Championship games but Sussex will not know whether it is going to be his swansong until early next week when Pakistan announce their squad for the forthcoming tour to Sri Lanka. If Yasir Arafat is chosen then Chawla will stay and could play in a further four Championship games.

He struck with his second delivery of the day thanks to an excellent catch by Prior as Arul Suppiah pushed hard at a googly shortly after reaching his first half-century of the season.

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