Yorkshire 545-9 declared (140 overs)
Sussex 222 (99.5 overs) and 195 (96.4 overs)
Yorkshire win by an innings and 128 runs. Yorkshire 22 points, Sussex 2 points.
Sussex lost by an innings for a second successive match in the Rothesay County Championship as their resistance crumbled on the final day at Scarborough midway through the afternoon.
Yorkshire triumphed by an innings and 128 runs to hoist themselves out of the bottom two places in Division One, in turn dragging their visitors into the relegation fight.
Sussex started the final day of this 11th-round clash on 115-3 in their second innings, trailing by 208.
On a deteriorating North Marine Road surface, their fate was obvious inside the first 20 minutes as they lost three wickets for just two runs in the opening 26 balls, teetering on 117-6.
And so it proved, even though their resistance through to mid-afternoon was impressive.
They were bowled out for 195, including five for 31 from 16.4 overs for new-ball seamer Matt Milnes – his first five-for in the Championship since September 2021 following injury.
Fynn Hudson-Prentice finished 52 not out off 156 balls.
Yorkshire’s third win yielded 22 points. Sussex’s fourth defeat handed them only two.
The gap between the two sides is now just a solitary point ahead of the September run-in. The pair meet again at Hove midway through next month, one of three remaining games.
The White Rose county have been replaced in ninth place in the table – second-bottom – by Durham, who were beaten at home by leaders Surrey this week.
The gap between the two is 12 points, with Yorkshire on 126 and Sussex have 127 points.
Yorkshire would even go above Essex should their game with Warwickshire at Chelmsford finish drawn.
In their last three games, Yorkshire not only face Sussex but Durham as well. They meet at Headingley in the final match of 2025.
Today (Friday 1 August), the hosts made an ideal start. Danial Ibrahim and Daniel Hughes fell – the two not out batters overnight – for 51 and 57 respectively added to the departure of captain John Simpson for a duck.
Milnes claimed the first two. Ibrahim was caught low down at second slip by Adam Lyth before Hughes was bowled playing back to one which kept low and scooted through.
Simpson was then bowled as he tried to leave alone one angled in from Milnes’s new-ball partner Jack White.
Danny Lamb was next to go, caught behind off Will Sutherland’s seam to make it 143-7. He fell chasing a wide ball having added 26 with fellow all-rounder Hudson-Prentice. Sussex needed much, much more.
By lunch the visitors had reached 166-7, with Hudson-Prentice on 32.
He played handsomely down the ground off seam, even using his feet against White on a couple of occasions to find the boundary wide of mid-on.
Hudson-Prentice was excellent in becoming Sussex’s third half-centurion of the innings, this coming off 138 balls. By the time he got there midway through the afternoon, Sussex were 188-7 with 48 overs remaining in the day.
He shared 47 for the eighth wicket with Jack Carson, who was the eighth man to fall when caught by Lyth diving at slip low down to his right – 191-8.
Replays suggest Carson was unfortunate to be given out, confirming the initial impression given by the batter stomping off the field.
Things happened quickly from there, with Sussex falling almost 44 overs short of survival.
This was Milnes’s first five-wicket haul for Yorkshire as he comes to the end of his third year with the club. His last was for Kent. He has since suffered a nightmare with multiple back stress fractures.
But he was excellent here, polishing things off by getting Gurinder Sandhu caught at point and then Henry Crocombe caught behind with a beauty for a golden duck.
In all, Milnes claimed seven wickets in the match.
Yorkshire head coach Anthony McGrath said: “It’s rounded off a really solid two weeks against two of the clubs that were above us, Surrey (draw) and Sussex.
“We got a curtailed by the weather last week but this week we backed up the performance and dominated all days. It was a brilliant all-round performance.
“To get 22 points gets us up that table now and hopefully we’re looking upwards now and not downwards.
“It’s certainly up there as one of our best bowling performances of the season. I think the one at York (against Essex) was good as well. That’s what I’m liking from the team now. We’re bowling as a unit.
“Matthew Revis is playing really well (with the bat, first-innings 152). You can see in his body language the confidence and the belief he’s got. But his technique is really, really good. He looks a high-class performer.
“You can see the lads were all delighted for Milnesy. We’ve had to manage him carefully given his previous two years (back stress fractures).
“The backroom staff have been brilliant. I have to give them a big shout out.”
McGrath also confirmed that Dom Bess will captain the county in the forthcoming Metro Bank One-Day Cup.
Sussex head coach Paul Farbrace said: “The last two weeks have been very similar (innings defeats to Essex and Yorkshire).
“The really disappointing thing for me – I spoke to players last week about this – is you could be beaten by a better team which I can take. What I can’t take is a lack of fight.
“Our bowling’s been so poor for the last two games. I know that’s going to sound like a ridiculous thing to say when you’ve been bowled out twice for 200 in a game. But our bowling has just been so ordinary.
“Yorkshire played superbly. They batted brilliantly. At the end of the day, it’s down to me because I said last week at the end of the game that we’d be picking pretty much the same team apart from one bowling change.
“We made that, and Danny Lamb came in because we thought that would be a better bowling option and also a better batting option.
“I said I’d give them all the chance to do it again and they’ve done it all again. They’ve done exactly the same as they did last week – so that’s on me.
“I take full responsibility for that. I obviously haven’t got them in a position this week to be ready for a fight.
“What it has shown is that, having started really well in the division, one or two have run out of steam and one or two have shown that actually they’re probably better off in the second division than the first division.
“That might sound harsh but I’m afraid that’s where we’re at.
“This has shown that we have an awful lot of work to do with our final three games in September to stay in Division One.”
