Tom Lammonby’s Unbeaten 74 Leads Somerset Against Sussex
Tom Lammonby dragged Somerset’s title bid back into sharp focus with his most assured innings of the season on a fluctuating second day at Hove.
On a surface that grew kinder by the hour, the left-hander put a lean summer to one side and batted with quiet authority for an unbeaten 74 from 143 balls, steering Somerset to 167-2 and a lead of 119 over Sussex in this Rothesay County Championship Division One clash.
Lammonby stands tall
Somerset had started the day on the back foot. They trailed by 48 after Sussex’s last pair, John Simpson and Jaydev Unadkat, wrung every drop out of the morning with a spirited stand of 40 to push the hosts to 250.
By the close, the mood had shifted. Lammonby, who arrived at Hove averaging 28 this season, looked like the player Somerset have been waiting for. He left well, drove with timing, and barely offered a chance as he anchored the reply.
He and Josh Thomas made the most of easing conditions and a softening ball, chiselling out 92 for the first wicket. Sussex captain Tom Haines shuffled his three seamers, searching for something – a bit of swing, a mistake, a misjudgment – but Somerset’s openers kept ticking along, quietly and efficiently.
The pressure finally told in the 23rd over. Sean Hunt, switching to the sea end, found extra bounce, Thomas fenced uncertainly, and Charlie Tear flung himself low at slip to cling on. Thomas departed for a solid hand in a vital stand, and Sussex finally had a way in.
They could not force it open. Archie Vaughan added 49 with Lammonby, only to fall driving at Unadkat, a thick inside edge through to the keeper ending a promising stay. That brought Henry Nicholls to the crease and, with the light fading, he and Lammonby calmly negotiated the last 10 overs. By stumps, Somerset had not only erased the deficit but seized control of the game.
Sussex let it slip
Sussex will know they should have been dictating terms long before Lammonby settled in. At 149-2 in their first innings, with Tom Clark scoring freely at a run a ball, they were poised to build a commanding lead.
Then came the turning point. Clark, on 85 and cruising, wafted at a length ball from Craig Overton without moving his feet, guiding it straight to slip. The dismissal cracked open the innings and exposed a soft underbelly. Seven wickets fell for 61 in 29 overs.
Somerset’s seamers earned that collapse. They pushed their lengths a touch fuller, hunted the stumps, and forced errors. James Coles chopped on when he tried to swat Lewis Gregory into the leg side, the thick inside edge cannoning into his stumps. Others followed, undone by discipline rather than demons in the pitch.
Overton led the charge with 4-66. He not only removed Clark but also broke a threatening third-wicket stand of 92 by dismissing Tear for 34, shaping one in and straightening it just enough to beat the bat. After lunch he returned to wipe out Jack Carson and Henry Crocombe in the space of three deliveries, ripping through the tail.
Joey Evison’s debut innings summed up Sussex’s middle-order muddle. He survived 18 balls, hit one boundary, then reached for a drive away from his body at Gregory and paid the price.
Simpson and Unadkat fight back
For all Somerset’s control, they did not have it all their own way. Overton, so sharp with the ball, was ragged in the slips. He shelled Tear on 10 and Simpson on 14, and those misses altered the texture of the day.
Simpson made Somerset pay. When Hunt fell as the ninth wicket, Sussex still trailed by one, but the former Middlesex man marshalled the tail superbly. He shielded Unadkat when needed, then cashed in on anything loose, threading gaps in a crowded outfield. Dropped for a third time on 56 by Migael Pretorius at mid-off, he advanced to an unbeaten 64 – his highest score in eight Championship innings.
Unadkat joined the counter-attack with brutal simplicity. He faced few balls, but both of his scoring shots sailed over the leg-side boundary for six, lifting Sussex to a precious batting bonus point that could matter when the table tightens at season’s end.
It took Jack Leach to end the fun. The left-arm spinner, held back until the tail, trapped Unadkat when a sweep went wrong. Leach’s brief intervention may prove a prelude to a far bigger role if Somerset look to spin Sussex out in the fourth innings.
For now, the game sits on a knife-edge, shaped by Clark’s loose drive, Simpson’s defiance and Lammonby’s return to form. The forecast for day three is grim and may yet smother both sides’ ambitions, but if the weather relents, Somerset have the platform – and the lead – to turn this into a statement win.
