It is back to the drawing board for Sussex in the National League after their top order batting crumbled against second division leaders Northamptonshire yesterday.

The county's bowlers appeared to have laid the foundations for a morale-boosting second successive win when they bowled out the Steelbacks for 148 on a two-paced Northampton pitch.

But they were quickly reduced to 55-6 in reply and were unable to stave off a fourth defeat in five outings despite a ninth wicket stand of 36 between Mark Davis and Paul Hutchison which briefly raised hopes of an unlikely victory before Hutchison's run out left them 13 runs short with 16 balls unused.

Sussex could not cope with the extra bounce generated by Northamptonshire's trio of tall seamers, Michael Cawdron, Andre Nel and Ben Phillips, at the start of their innings.

Left-armer Cawdron condemned Matt Prior to a third successive one-day duck before removing Chris Adams, who pulled straight to square leg, and Robin Martin-Jenkins while new ball partner Nel made sure Richard Montgomerie's latest return to his former county was one to forget.

Montgomerie went for a duck in the South African's second over while Murray Goodwin fell in identical fashion, surprised by extra bounce more than a modicum of late seam movement.

It could have been worse. Both Adams and Goodwin were dropped in Nel's third over.

At 45-5 and later 98-8 there seemed no way back for Sussex but Davis and Hutchison tilted the balance back in their favour in a stand spanning 15 overs which brought the target down to a manageable 15 from 20 balls.

But Hutchison was a fraction late in responding to his partner's call for a single to backward point off Graeme Swann. Mike Hussey's throw and Gerard Brophy's athletic stumping did the rest and the end came without addition to the score off the second ball of the 43rd over when last man Jason Lewry lost his leg stump to Jeff Cook's wobbly medium pace.

Davis deserved better and so did Tim Ambrose, who top-scored with 29, but Sussex always looked second favourites because of their inability to build any sort of partnership until Davis and Hutchison showed what could be achieved with careful shot selection and an ability to play every ball on its merits.

Ambrose quickly lost Kevin Innes who succumbed to Ben Phillips' accurate off stump line and the former Kent man had Mushtaq Ahmed leg before playing across a straight one after a brief flurry which included a huge six into the leg side off Jason Brown.

Ambrose and Davis put on 25 for the eighth wicket with Davis hitting Swann's off spin back over his head for six, but in the same over Ambrose got a toe-end on an attempted cut and with his departure at 98-8 went Sussex's realistic hopes of avoiding a fourth National League defeat in five matches this season.

So much then for Northampton's reputation as a batsman's paradise. The pitch was used on Wednesday and as well as offering extra bounce it also turned sharply.

Not surprisingly Mushtaq bowled superbly on it to take 2-16 from his nine overs but Sussex's seamers enjoyed themselves just as much.

With James Kirtley on England duty and Billy Taylor still nursing a thigh strain, new ball duties were shared by two bowlers with just four National League appearances between them since the start of last season.

But left-armers Hutchison and Lewry did an outstanding job, sharing the spoils as Northamptonshire slumped to 33-4 after winning the toss.

Lewry bowled his nine overs off the reel to take 2-27, finding a modicum of lateral movement to defeat Phil Jacques' tentative prod outside off stump before cleverly holding one back to flummox Cook.

Hutchison is bowling better than at any time in a Sussex career which is yet to take off and he strengthened his claim for more Championship action in a seven-over spell which brought him the wickets of skipper Hussey, defeated by late awayswing, and fellow opener Rob White who was squared up by a ball which jagged back into him off the seam and flew to backward point.

Sussex would have been in clover had Ambrose not dropped David Sales on 12 when he tried to intercept an edge off Lewry which would have comfortably carried to slip.

Sales went on to make 28, a crucial contribution in the context of a low-scoring contest, while his stand of 38 with Phillips, a player Sussex once tried to sign, for the fifth wicket was comfortably the biggest of the match.

Not that either of them played Mushtaq's exotic variations with any degree of confidence and it was the stranglehold applied by the leg spinner which enabled Sussex to break through at the other end when Phillips holed out to deep mid-wicket hitting against Davis's off spin.

Adams cannot have had the luxury of bringing in two close catchers in the 30th over of a League game too often, but such was the pressure exerted by Mushtaq for whom the wickets of Sales and Swann in successive overs were the least he deserved.

Brophy, one of four 'overseas' players in the Northamptonshire side, organised some lower order resistance with a patient 31 before succumbing to Innes's slower ball while Martin-Jenkins, so used to taking the new ball, proved his effectiveness at the end of the innings as well with the wickets of Nel and Cawdron who at least ensured Northamptonshire used up nearly all their allocation.

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