Mike Yardy and Carl Hopkinson - Sussex's men for a crisis - came good again yesterday to keep the Sharks on course for the knockout stages of the Twenty20 Cup.

On Friday they saw their side to victory over Surrey at Hove and in last night's return at The Oval they put together an unbroken partnership of 81 in nine overs to ease Sussex to their fourth win out of five and joint top spot in the south group ahead of tomorrow's Hove showdown with Kent at Hove (5.30pm).

Sussex seemed to have done the hard bit by bowling out Surrey for 131 on a typical Oval belter but they were in danger of squandering their advantage when they slumped to 54-5 halfway through their reply.

Fearful of losing more wickets, Yardy and Hopkinson's initial response was to calmly keep the scoreboard ticking over with ones and twos but when the scoring rate needed increasing they responded in style.

They took 13 off Surrey captain Rikki Clarke's only over and then 12 off the next from off-spinner Nyan Doshi - the 16th of the innings - which included a six over long off by Yardy. That got the equation down to 24 at a run-a-ball and the outcome was never in doubt after that.

Yardy loves The Oval more than any other ground aside from Hove and apart from one reprieve on 23, when Tim Murtagh dropped a difficult chance running in from the mid-wicket boundary, his was an almost flawless display.

His competition-best 68 came off just 43 balls and included seven fours, the pick of them a sensational drive hit on the up off Azhar Mahmood which flew to the cover boundary.

Hopkinson's part should not be overlooked either. Sensing Yardy was in the mood, he made sure his partner saw plenty of the strike and when Yardy smashed Jade Dernbach through the covers for the winning hit there were still 11 balls unused.

Such a comfortable finish had seemed unlikely when Murtagh took three wickets in his new ball spell including Adams, who opened in the absence of Murray Goodwin, and Doshi struck with the first ball of his spell.

But Yardy has effectively won three crucial one-dayers for Sussex this season with his composed batting and by the end Surrey hardly knew where to bowl to him.

Sussex had earlier bowled out their old rivals for the second time in four days after Adams won the toss and once again most of the damage was done by Yasir Arafat.

The Pakistani took 4-31 and is now leading wicket-taker in the competition with 11 and eight of his victims have been Surrey batsman.

Arafat will be on a hat-trick against Kent tomorrow after removing Jade Dernbach and Ian Salisbury in the final over but it was the work he did with the new ball which undermined Surrey on an excellent pitch for one-day cricket.

He persuaded Ali Brown to clip his first ball straight to mid-wicket where Richard Montgomerie, making his competition debut a day after his 35th birthday, took the first of two good catches.

Then James Benning got under an attempted pull and Surrey's prolific openers were back in the dug-out before they could do inflict too much damage.

Arafat's third over was less successful as Mark Ramprakash sliced him over third man for six and hit three boundaries as Surrey's third wicket pair repaired the early damage in a stand of 39.

But Surrey were never the same after both Ramprakash and Clarke fell in successive overs.

When they were looking to accelerate Surrey instead had to regroup through Mahmood and Scott Newman but they needed six overs to add 28 as Sussex's seamers mixed their lengths impressively to keep the batsmen second-guessing while Yardy bowled an excellent spell of left-arm spin and did not concede a boundary in his four overs.

And when the dangerous Mahmood tried to get on with it he holed out to long on in the 14th over, having hit the previous delivery from Wright for six.

All this from an attack missing Mushtaq Ahmed who was resting his sore neck. Sussex probably only need one more win from their three remaining games to reach the knockout stages.