Skipper Chris Adams is still confident his side will be playing first division Championship cricket next season even though they lost ground in the promotion race on Saturday.

The match against Essex at Arundel ended in a draw with the visitors on 254-7 after they had been set a victory target of 310 from 74 overs.

Both sides picked up nine points, but Glamorgan's win over Middlesex lifted them above both Essex and Sussex, who drop to fifth on 85 points although they are just six points behind leaders Worcestershire.

Adams said: "We are definitely capable of finishing in the top three and going up, but things are so tight now that we must realise that every game until the end of the season is going to be a scrap and we can't afford to give an inch."

Ultimately it was the loss of 30 overs to rain on Thursday which meant an absorbing four days did not reach a positive conclusion.

There were slow handclaps from a small section of the crowd when Sussex extended their second innings on Saturday morning for another 75 minutes before declaring with only their fourth Championship score of over 300 on the board.

"I was disappointed with that and also the fact that when we came off at the end there was absolutely zero response from the crowd after what I thought was four enthralling days on the most mundane pitch," said Adams.

"People are going to get frustrated, but I'm sure they wouldn't want me to set a ridiculous total and lose the game."

The pitch got more batsman-friendly as the match progressed, but Sussex might have been celebrating had three crucial catches been held.

All three, by Richard Montgomerie and Tony Cottey at slip, and Andy Patterson behind the stumps in what proved to be his last appearance for the county, were difficult and were rare blemishes in a Sussex fielding perform-ance which put their opponents to shame.

Michael Bevan claimed 3-74 and those wickets completed a fine match for the Australian who had earlier made serene progress to his highest score for Sussex, an unbeaten 151 off 295 balls with ten fours and four sixes.

He has now scored 1,238 runs in all cricket this season and will be a hard act to replace when he returns to Australia for a one-day series next month and misses two weeks of domestic action.