Mushtaq attack hits Sussex

If rain robs Sussex of a chance to beat the Championship leaders, Surrey, it will be cruel, because they have worked hard to get into a promising position and Murray Goodwin was looking particularly vengeful for understandable reasons.

But even before the torrential downpour that left the County Ground here looking as if it had been engulfed by an exceptionally high tide from the nearby English Channel, Sussex had actually been subjected to an earlier dampener as they tried to finish the visitors off in the morning session.

Mushtaq Ahmed had added just half-a-dozen runs to his overnight 17 when he pulled a ball from off-spinner Mark Davies to Goodwin's left at mid-wicket. To the fielder's anguish he mystifyingly failed to hang on to the ball and the former Pakistan Test leg-spinner rained a short shower of blows on the luckless Sussex side as he doubled his score and helped Surrey to set an interesting target.

Mushtaq has not lost his appetite for the first-class game and says he would like to return full-time to the county scene next season. Having been hauled out of the lower reaches, where he has been sharing his experience with Little Stoke in the North Staffs and South Cheshire League, he is clearly going to make the most of the two weeks he will be filling in for his fellow Pakistani Saqlain Mushtaq.

To see the bearded barrel-like figure – still only 32 – blasting away it would have been reasonable to assume that Surrey had signed him for his runs, but, of course, it is for his wickets that they want him; he has more than 850 in his first-class career.

It was only a year ago last March that Mushtaq last played a Test match – his 50th, against New Zealand in Auckland – and while he has not yet taken a wicket in his second stint in the county game – he served Somerset well from 1993 to 1998 – he appears to have lost none of his wile or guile. He was the leading wicket-taker in Pakistan domestic cricket last year and the let-off Goodwin allowed him suggests his luck is in.

James Kirtley did manage to bowl Tim Murtagh off an inside edge in the over after Mushtaq's escape, but the diminutive Pakistani and last man Ed Giddins then added 29 precious runs before Goodwin finally got his man, hanging on to a slice at third man to deny Mushtaq a fifty.

Whether Mushtaq had already done enough remains to be seen, but Goodwin was clearly determined to recompense his team-mates for his blunder and by the lunch interval was well on the way to his half-century, even managing to steal a single off Mushtaq's second over.

Sussex had already lost two wickets by then. Opener Richard Montgomerie tonked 10 off Alex Tudor's first over, only to lunge at Giddins and present wicketkeeper Jon Batty with the resulting catch. Tony Cottey fell shortly before lunch, during which interval the heavens opened and forced an eventual abandonment for the day.