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Day 1: Hayden adds backbone to Northants

Neville Scott at Hove

First day of four: Northants 184-2 v Sussex

When Northamptonshire drew up their short list for an overseas player who, for two years, would also be club captain, the names were all of left-handed, Test-capped openers with such a proven devotion to the crease that runs would follow in volume. A hollow side might at last regain their spine.

Matthew Hayden, the eventual choice, fulfilled his brief to the letter yesterday. Left by the arrival of rain at 5.15pm on the verge of a 35th century, his 170-ball 98 not out punished Sussex's apparently sound decision to field.

Cheers from a knot of Northants players in front of the pavilion hailed an effort of purpose and conviction, far removed from some of the side's meandering passages of the last three years.

Northants were greatly helped, however, by three dropped catches, none easy; one, off Mark Robinson, came when Hayden was on 39, another, four overs from the early close, denied Robin Martin-Jenkins a second wicket and reprieved Russell Warren on 35.

To compound things, Sussex captain Chris Adams, one of the finest slip catchers on the circuit, split the webbing of his right hand in trying to take the latter chance diving to his right. He immediately left for stitches.

Warren, responding impressively to the club's decision to drop him down the order away from the new ball, arrived at 57 for two and played with such responsibility in support of Hayden that his first seven runs took 50 minutes before Sussex too often fed his favourite cut.

His captain, with a Sheffield Shield average in the high fifties but only seven Australia caps, hit in contrast with a quite immense power of shot. After a lost morning and an early lunch, Hayden's answer to a green pitch of little pace which proved only intermittently to seam was to fetch Martin-Jenkins from outside off stump and deposit him first bounce over midwicket by the day's 12th over.

Directly afterwards, Rob Bailey, forward, and Mal Loye, fatally back, went to balls which nipped in. But Sussex, badly missing Jason Lewry, whose shoulder problem keeps him out until mid-May, failed to exploit the help there was.

Day 2: Sussex sunk by Malcolm blitz

Neville Scott at Hove

Second day of four: Sussex (79-7) trail Northants (391-8 dec) by 312 runs.

In arguably his best sustained bowling spell since joining Northamptonshire last year, Devon Malcolm sent Sussex plummeting towards the follow-on as he swept aside four of the top five batsmen in his first nine overs with the new ball.

Had Raj Rao been taken at third slip six balls earlier, Malcolm would by then have had five for 27. As it was, he destroyed a line-up containing significant new talent and obduracy.

Left 35 minutes to negotiate before tea, Sussex duly lost three men in eight Malcolm balls. Richard Montgomerie was caught behind off the inside edge from one which bounced high and cut back.

Chris Adams, speaking before the contest of how much he relished facing his former team-mate for the first time, was undone by one which kept low and ripped through his back-foot defence to clip the off bail.

If this confirmed slight variability of bounce for seamers at the Sea End, Malcolm harnessed it where Sussex, in an often poor bowling performance, had failed to do so.

Malcolm fired one across Tasmanian left-hander Michael Di Venuto, facing his first ball at Hove, and brought a fine low catch from third slip. Though another new Sussex acquisition, Tony Cottey, survived the hat-trick, he went in the evening's ninth over, deceived by a slower ball.

With Malcolm's strike partner, Paul Taylor - together they form the oldest county pairing - removing Toby Peirce just before and Robin Martin-Jenkins being rather tamely bounced out later, Sussex ended in disarray, 163 away from the follow-on, when Alex Edwards fell to what proved the day's last ball.

Northants had shed wickets pushing hard to make up for lost time but, assisted by even more frail fielding, the typically astute David Ripley set up a declaration. Matthew Hayden, run out after completing an impressive hundred, and Russell Warren, with a canny 88, had fallen with two others by lunch.

Day 4: Northants caught on the back foot

Neville Scott

Match drawn

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE know all about former team-mate Richard Montgomerie's peculiar habit at the crease of preparing for each ball by repeatedly belting his back foot with the bat. He must be the only player on the circuit to carry a permanent self-inflicted bruise.

But as a means of maintaining focus it worked splendidly again for him yesterday. Passing fifty for the 38th time in his career (and the second time in three innings since joining Sussex after his Northampton release last year) he accepted the challenge of denying old employers with a special relish.

Helped by fast bowling from Devon Malcolm and Paul Taylor which lost all semblance of length after Sussex followed on 30 minutes before lunch, 287 behind, Montgomerie's 53-ball fifty was almost certainly his fastest. Thoughts of a Northants victory soon receded and by tea Sussex still had all wickets in hand.

With the start delayed by 45 minutes for mopping up, Northants had earlier taken only 11 overs to remove the last three first-innings batsmen. Raj Rao, dropped when he had scored two on Thursday evening before Friday's play was washed out, finished unbeaten on 52. Malcolm, with two more successes, returned six for 39, his best analysis since joining the county last year.

The figures were entirely deserved for bowling of real conviction straight and distinctly fast. But Malcolm perhaps typifies more than anyone the inconsistency which English cricket has tolerated far too readily. Malcolm's first seven second-innings overs, either side of lunch, had soon gone for 34 with barely a hint of menace.

Much here, perhaps, for new Northants director of cricket Bob Carter to work on. He will have been equally disquieted by the side's very English inability to push home their advantage. Yet if sincerity and unstinting commitment can still command a response in a sport increasingly given over to self interest, Carter will flourish.

This is a man, after all, who in 3.5 years away from Northampton as coach to the Wellington side in New Zealand, still checked his old county's full scoreboard every day on the Internet. In contrast to many in the club's leadership through recent years, he has no personal agenda to pursue other than improving his team.

Since coaching innovations invariably induce derision in England, even as all still complain that nothing changes at Test level, some of Carter's methods may raise eyebrows.

With a diploma in sports management and a readiness to learn from his peers in fields as far removed as American basketball, his approach embraces a total devotion to fitness and an emphasis on team psychology and open discussion. He is an advocate of Pilates - not a reference to Pontius's family but a training schedule somewhere between yoga and aerobics, designed to leave players free of stress and in control of mind and body.

Offered the term 'holistic' to define all this, Carter accepts it with fervour. ``There are not three sessions in a day's cricket, but four. And the fourth, a debrief at the end of play when people analyse together what needs to be done, as individuals and for the team, is the most important,'' he says.