Sussex's promotion challenge is virtually over after another abysmal batting collapse at Colwyn Bay yesterday.

Only skipper Chris Adams remained defiant as his side reached a dismal 112-5 in reply to Glamorgan's mammoth 718-3 declared.

Adams finished the second day unbeaten on 55, but the county will need someone to match the application he has shown if they are to avoid a third successive defeat which would virtually wreck their chances of going up from Division Two.

He might have expected Robin Martin-Jenkins to show it, especially as he came to the crease with Sussex tottering on 78-4 after losing two wickets in successive overs.

Instead he watched in amazement as Steve Watkin posted a man at deep square leg, dug the next ball in short and saw Martin-Jenkins pull it straight down the throat of subsitute fielder Huw Roberts.

It was brainless cricket, simple as that. No wonder Adams threw his helmet to the ground and sank to his haunches in utter despair. He is rapidly losing patience with his side and who can blame him?

The county's reply had made the worst possible start.

Debutant Michael Yardy got off the mark with a streaky boundary through the slips but he had faced just 11 balls when Alex Wharf beat him for pace with a delivery which may have kept a touch low.

Tony Cottey, promoted up the order to No3, got a warm reception on his latest return to the county he served for 12 years and an even warmer one when he headed back to the pavilion two balls later after edging a ball from Wharf which did just enough off the seam to find the edge.

That left Sussex 11-2, but Adams and Richard Montgomerie seemed to be repairing the early damage as they put on 66 in 33 overs without undue alarm on a pitch still perfectly good for batting.

But after making a patient 23 and showing the sort of concentration the situation demanded, Montgomerie fatally dropped his guard, pushed forward to Dean Cosker's slow left arm and was caught behind.

Will House lasted only two balls on his first Championship appearance for a month before nibbling at a ball from Steve Watkin he should have had nothing to do with.

It's not often that Nick Bartlett - Sussex's No1 supporter and certainly their most vociferous - hasn't got an excuse to bellow out 'Sussex by the Sea' during the course of a day's play, but even he has had to suffer in silence along with the 50 or so supporters who have made the trip to north Wales.

However, along with everyone else at Penrhyn Avenue, he did get off his feet to acclaim a monumental batting performance by Glamorgan opener Steve James earlier in the day which rewrote vast tracts of his county's record book.

When James glanced Umer Rashid for four shortly before 3.00pm he became the first batsman in Glamorgan history to score a triple century. Emyr Davies's 61 year old individual county record of 287 had gone a few minutes earlier.

It was a supreme effort in which the concentration he had shown in batting for eight minutes short of ten hours was almost as commendable as the quality of some of his strokes.

Even when he had passed 250, James was displaying the same virtues he had shown when he first went out to bat on Tuesday morning, getting into line, playing every ball on its merits and punishing anything loose.

Unfortunately, from a Sussex point of view, there was far too much of the latter. All of a sudden, the exertions of a long season have caught up on their attack and the 'awesome foursome' were more like the 'awful foursome' as James, Matthew Maynard and Adrian Dale picked off runs almost at will.

House, one of eight bowlers used by Sussex, took one of the two wickets to fall. The first had gone to James Kirtley, who again shouldered much of the bowling responsiblity with commendable fortitude, in the day's eighth over when he bowled Michael Powell with a yorker length delivery which the batsman jabbed his bat down on too late.

The third wicket pair had put on 125 in 33 overs, but when the score is 497-2 the last person you want to see ambling down the pavilion steps is Matthew Maynard, one of the most destructive batsman on the county circuit.

The Glamorgan captain duly set about rubbing Sussex noses in it.

Dropped on 20 by Umer Rashid, he went from 30 to his half-century in five scoring shots, pulling Jason Lewry into the gardens behind mid-wicket when the left-armer dropped short before repeating the shot off the increasingly exasperated Mark Robinson.

It seemed certain that Maynard, whose 64 had also included five boundaries, would continue to wreak havoc after lunch. But in House's third over he played all around a straight one and House duly celebrated his first Championship wicket for the county. At least he had something to remember the day by.

All the while James sailed on. His 200 came off 332 balls with 26 boundaries and when he reached his 300 he'd hit 14 more fours and faced 481 deliveries. It's hard to pick out the best of his boundaries, but the glorious extra cover drive off Lewry early in the day certainly drew the warmest applause from an appreciative audience just happy to be part of Glamorgan cricket history.

Maynard surprisingly batted on after James had gone to 300 and ushered Glamorgan to 700 with the same shot. When the declaration finally came Glamorgan had compiled their highest ever score and the total was the second highest conceded by Sussex and only eight short of the 726 Nottinghamshire rattled up against them back in 1895.

No wonder Nick Bartlett and the rest of the Sussex supporters were left speechless.