The celebrations were continuing in the capital last night but not among Sussex supporters.

The Sharks beat Surrey by three wickets with three balls to spare at the Oval but it still was not enough to secure a place in the knockout stages of the Twenty20 Cup for the first time.

Rana Naved, who had earlier taken his first wickets for the county, smashed a straight six off Tim Murtagh over long on to clinch the Sharks' first win over the undisputed kings of Twenty20 in four attempts.

Rana and Mark Davis hugged each other in the middle and Sussex fans in a crowd of more than 14,000 celebrated.

But a few moments later it emerged that Derbyshire had beaten Nottinghamshire in their final game and they qualified at Sussex's expense because they had won four games to Sussex's three.

Chris Adams and his players have every right to feel they have been dealt a rough hand during the qualifying round.

Only three of their eight matches have not been rain affected and had the weather been kinder they could easily have won what was the hardest of the three divisions.

Instead they were one of three teams who finished a point behind Surrey. Middlesex, who also won four games, were the other qualifiers from the south group.

Director of cricket Peter Moores said: "It's pretty hard to take because I don't think there has been a better team in the group.

"Lady luck hasn't done us many favours but hopefully that will even itself out in the other competitions.

"But what we proved is that we are a good one-day unit and that bodes well for the totesport and C&G Trophy later in the season.

"I thought we bowled magnificently and although we lost a couple of key wickets halfway through, the youngsters came through for us. There are still a lot of positives but the lads feel a bit cheesed off and rightly so."

Ian Ward laid the foundations with a 29-ball 50 against his former county as Sussex chased 145 for victory but it was the way their less experienced players held their nerve which was just as impressive after Harbhajan Singh and Nyan Doshi had threatened to drag Surrey back into contention.

The Lions' spinners conceded 39 runs between them in eight overs and Sussex, who had raced to 80-0 off nine overs, only managed 36 runs off the next six.

Yardy relieved the pressure when he smashed the first ball of the 18th over from Azhar Mahmood back over his head for six and although the left-hander picked out the diving Ian Salisbury at mid-wicket later in the same over he'd done his job and Sussex had got the equation down to 11 off 12 balls.

Mark Davis bisected James Benning and Alistair Brown as they converged on the same ball for a precious boundary in the penultimate over and even after Luke Wright had holed out to long on Sussex needed five from seven balls.

One mighty swing of Rana's bat finished the job.

Sussex's bowlers had done superbly to restrict Surrey to 144-8 on a good batting surface with the boundary on the Harleyford Road side 60 yards from the middle.

Rana removed dangerman Alistair Brown with his second ball off a top-edged pull while Wright justified Adams'decision to give him the new ball when he knocked back James Benning's leg stump.

Both Rana and James Kirtley mixed it up cleverly with Kirtley bringing Ian Salisbury's violent cameo, which included sixes off his first two balls, to an end.

Once again Sussex's spinners proved their worth. Mushtaq Ahmed's two wickets took his tally to 12 and it is unlikely his economy rate of less than six runs an over will be bettered in the competition.

Although Tim Ambrose fell in the first over, Ward and Adams smashed 75 in the first six overs of the reply with Ward hitting three sixes and two fours.

Harbhajan trapped Adams in front with his fourth ball and Ward fell to Doshi immediately after reaching 50 but they had laid the foundations and Yardy made sure their efforts were not wasted.