Sussex cemented their place at the top of the South Division after a comfortable six-wicket victory over Surrey Brown Caps last night made it four successive wins in the Twenty20 Cup.

It will not be until later in the week, when their rivals have played their games in hand, before the Sharks know if they will definitely be in the quarter-finals for the second time in three years but it would take a freakish set of results to deny them now.

Sussex have the added incentive of knowing that a win in their final game against Middlesex at Lord’s on Sunday should secure them a home tie in the last eight.

A crowd of 5,500 went home happy last night although that was not the mood at the start when further problems with the notorious Hove floodlights meant the players came off just two balls into the Surrey innings after the pylons at the sea end failed to fire. Fortunately, after a 25 minute delay the lights came back on.

A strong side including Matt Prior and Luke Wright made short work of a target of 124, winning with 19 balls to spare after Sussex’s spinners had suffocated the life out of the Surrey innings.

The Brown Caps only got to three figures thanks to some tail-end hitting by No.10 Andre Nel after they had been completely tied down by the four slow bowlers employed by skipper Mike Yardy.

Between them Yardy, Piyush Chawla – making probably his last appearance in a Sussex shirt – Rory Hamilton-Brown and Chris Nash bowled 12 overs unbroken to take a combined 5-60 and those figures would have been even better had Hamilton Brown’s last over not cost 16 runs.

Yardy picked up Matt Spriegel and Stewart Walters with successive deliveries in his final over while Chawla foxed James Benning and Chris Jordan with his googly before Hamilton-Brown joined the fun against his former county when Gary Wilson gave him a simple return catch.

Sussex certainly know how to play one-day cricket on these slow, low Hove pitches but Surrey were not just strangled by spin. Robin Martin-Jenkins has done relatively little bowling in recent weeks but he broke the back of the Surrey top order with 3-17 from three overs at the start, including the key wicket of Mark Ramprakash.

Sussex’s perennial nemesis had just got going, belting three boundaries in Wright’s second over, but when he cut fiercely off the back foot he was stunned to see Dwayne Smith catch the ball inches off the turf diving to his left at backward point.

It seemed to deflate Surrey and apart from the odd fumble on the rock-hard outfield the Sharks fielded well. No one scored more than Ramprakash’s 20 and after his departure in the fourth over it was another ten before the visitors found the boundary again.

Sussex had no such problems. Murray Goodwin must have felt a lot better after his struggles in the Championship to be able to rock onto the back foot and crack two fours in the opening over from Nel.

After a relatively subdued start Wright, rightly promoted to reprise his England role at the top of the order, lit the blue touch paper when he belted three successive deliveries from Jordan through the off side as the Sharks’ openers put on 71 in ten overs.

The stand was eventually broken when Wright was stumped coming down the pitch trying to hit Afzaal over the top but by then Sussex’s asking rate was down to less than six an over – a cakewalk in Twenty20 terms with wickets in hand.

There was a brief wobble when Prior, Goodwin and Hamilton-Brown fell in successive overs, Goodwin having made 38 off 43 balls, and there wasn’t the explosive hitting the spectators had seen in the World Twenty20, although Smith did launch a huge six onto the roof of the Gilligan Stand before blasting the winning boundary through extra cover.