Yorkshire flirt with relegation

Sussex supporters found themselves cheering a Yorkshireman last night after last man, Mark Robinson, defied the might of the reigning county champions and forced a draw. Robinson, who has a career batting average that is below four, had to undergo a tail-ender's equivalent of hell, facing 11 of the last 26 balls – including a taut final over – of a tense and intriguing match.

But the Yorkshire-born seamer, who joined Sussex from Yorkshire in 1997, came through his trial with honour intact and he even managed to get a boundary, the ball shaving his leg stump after clipping his inside edge and careering on to the boundary.

The result means that Yorkshire have now not recorded a single championship victory in their opening seven games and worse, they remain rooted at the bottom of the First Division and must now fight hard to avoid relegation.

But there was more spirit to this performance than in any of their previous games this year, and their young spinners Richard Dawson and Andy Gray look like becoming a force to be reckoned with.

Perhaps Yorkshire needed the tranquillity of Arundel Castle grounds to hear the alarm bells, which had been sounding around the champions since April when they lost to Surrey at Headingley.

They had certainly received a wake-up call during the first two days and when Darren Lehmann's monumental second-innings contribution of a double hundred gagged the Sussex support something akin to urgency certainly awoke among the South Australian's charges.

And after the Yorkshire lower order had added sufficient runs before lunch yesterday to provide Sussex with a tempting enough target and the attack with something to bowl at there was even less noise in this aristocratic amphitheatre.

The target they had settled on equated to 322 to win in 79 overs, but within an over Sussex were in trouble, losing Murray Goodwin to the fourth ball of their second innings. Chris Adams and opener Richard Montgomerie became victims of speed restrictions on their scoring rate, and when the Sussex captain was done by a fine in-swinger from Ryan Sidebottom, followed two balls later by Montgomerie who got himself run out, the writing looked to be on the nearby castle wall.

Sussex batsmen departed regularly after that, except for Matt Prior who completed his second half-century of the game and impressed with his calmness at the crease. He showed that he was aware that playing for a draw and getting it are two different things – that he and Robinson managed it bordered on the miraculous. And Yorkshire will shortly require a miracle if they are to save their season.