YORKSHIRE were frustrated by poor weather and a slow pitch on day three of their County Championship match against Sussex at Hove.
Play did not begin until 2pm after heavy rain, with 29 overs lost to the elements, and Sussex have reached 283-5 at tea after resuming on 175-4.
The hosts need 62 to avoid the follow-on, but, even should they fail to get there, the weather forecast for tomorrow is even worse.
The draw is the overwhelming favourite, which would stretch leaders Yorkshire’s unbeaten record this season to 12 matches.
The only wicket to fall on the third afternoon was taken by Liam Plunkett around 15 minutes before tea.
The England man had former Yorkshire pace bowler Ollie Robinson caught in the gully by Glenn Maxwell for 48, made from 84 balls with seven fours.
Michael Yardy has batted through the session to move from seven to 65, while Luke Wright is the other undefeated batsman on one.
On Saturday, Adil Rashid took two wickets in three balls, plus the key wicket of Ed Joyce just before stumps, to keep Yorkshire in charge after Gary Ballance had earlier scored his first hundred for four months.
Leg spinner Rashid finished the second day with 3-67 as Joyce, with 100, led Sussex’s reply of 175-4 to Yorkshire’s first innings 494, in which Ballance made 165.
Irish left-hander Joyce put on 110 for Sussex’s first wicket with Luke Wells, but Rashid, a member of England’s Oval Test squad and tipped to make his Test debut against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates in the autumn, then bowled Wells for 43 with a quicker ball before having Matt Machan caught off bat and pad at short leg for a two-ball duck in the same over.
Plunkett reduced Sussex to 139 for three by winning an lbw shout against Chris Nash on 18, and Joyce fell 14 balls from the close when he chipped Rashid tamely to short leg trying to turn him around the corner towards the vacant fine leg area.
Earlier Ballance’s first hundred since April’s Antigua Test, and a record-breaking seventh wicket stand of 197 with Tim Bresnan, propelled Yorkshire into a dominant position after they had resumed on 346-6.
Left-hander Ballance, dropped by England because of poor form following the second Ashes Test defeat at Lord’s, converted his overnight 98 not out into 165, his 26th first-class century, and Bresnan, who resumed on 44, went to 78 before he was run out at the non-striker’s end failing to complete a second run called for by Plunkett.
Ballance clipped a ball from seamer Ollie Robinson to the mid-wicket boundary in the second over of a sun-baked morning to reach three figures for the first time since he made 122 for England against the West Indies in the Caribbean, and batted with increasing confidence to rattle past 150.
He celebrated reaching that landmark with his second six, clubbed over long on off Nash’s off spin, and had faced 266 balls in 349 minutes at the crease, also hitting 19 fours, when he was surprised by a fine ball from left-arm seamer Chris Liddle which beat him off the pitch to bowl him off stump.
Four balls later, after Plunkett had got off the mark with a square-driven boundary off Liddle, Bresnan’s excellent 174-ball innings - his fifth score above 50 in his 15th championship knock of the summer - ended when he was slow to respond to Plunkett’s call and failed to beat Nash’s throw from long leg.
Steven Patterson went for nought, caught behind off Liddle, and his dismissal delayed the lunch interval as nine Yorkshire wickets were down. That then brought a last wicket partnership of 35 in 7.1 overs before Plunkett, sent back by Ryan Sidebottom, was run out by Joyce’s direct hit at the bowlers’ end.
Plunkett made 28 from 34 balls and last man Sidebottom also played some useful strokes in his unbeaten 17, while the Ballance-Bresnan stand was a record for Yorkshire’s seventh wicket against Sussex, beating the 157 added by Bresnan and Kane Williamson at Scarborough last season.
Joyce hit Rashid for three sixes, the first over long on and the second high over mid wicket when the bowler dropped short. The third was also driven over the long on boundary and the left-hander had eleven fours besides in his 139-ball century. In all, Joyce faced 143 balls, in 204 minutes.