Sussex played like champions at Edgbaston yesterday as they reminded Warwickshire how much hard work lies ahead if they are to take away their title.

They bowled out the first division leaders for 346, their lowest completed innings total since the opening game of the season, as Robin Martin-Jenkins took 4-62, his best bowling performance for three months.

Ian Ward and former Warwickshire junior Richard Montgomerie responded positively by posting their first century opening partnership since the teams met at Horsham in mid-May.

Ward passed 1,000 runs in his first season with Sussex with a six and although he fell shortly afterwards, Montgomerie will resume today on 73 with Sussex 125-1.

With poor weather forecast for tomorrow, a draw remains the likely outcome.

That would suit Warwickshire, who could probably clinch their first title since 1995 by avoiding defeat in their last three matches, such is their advantage at the top.

Sussex have probably left their charge too late but the £50,000 runners-up prize money is incentive enough for them to maintain their current level of performance in the last month of the season.

Warwickshire's success has been based on big first innings scores and when they were 184-2 yesterday with Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott looking well set it seemed as if that trend would continue.

They lost three wickets in four overs for the addition of just 14 runs and it needed a stand of 99 between Trott and Tony Frost to stave off total disaster.

Neither Mohammad Akram nor James Kirtley could make much impression with the second new ball so it was a good job that Martin-Jenkins finally rediscovered the zip which made him the county's most consistent seamer in the first two months of the season but which had deserted him until yesterday.

Since taking 5-96 against Northants in May, the all-rounder has picked up just four Championship wickets at 86 apiece but here he bowled gun-barrel straight to rip out the tail.

No doubt he would have been happy if one of those wickets had fallen instead to Kirtley, whose double strike in the morning left him one short of claiming his 500th first-class victim.

Kirtley picked up the key wicket of Bell who added only three runs to his overnight 84 before shouldering arms only to discover that a nip-backer had dislodged his off bail.

Poor Bell's morning did not improve when he found out that he had been left out of England's winter tour squad.

Jim Troughton drove straight to cover in Kirtley's next over while Akram had Michael Powell caught behind.

Sussex's morning might have got even better when Mark Davis deflected a straight drive from Trott onto the stumps at the non-striker's end with Frost out of his ground, but all umpire Graham Burgess could offer was a shrug of the shoulders. He was taking evasive action and unable to give a decision.

Akram, in particular, bowled poorly with the second new ball but just when Warwickshire were getting back on top, Mushtaq Ahmed deceived Frost with a top-spinner to claim his 70th wicket of the season.

Martin-Jenkins sliced through the tail in five overs with Trott falling ten short of a hundred but passing 1,000 runs nevertheless.

The feeling was that a side with eight good batsmen had missed the boat and that view was reinforced after tea when Montgomerie, in particular, savaged a wayward attack.

He hit Dewald Pretorious for three fours in the eighth over and another four boundaries flowed when the South African was replaced by Dougie Brown who, like Pretorious, served up a diet of juicy half-volleys.

It says something for the relative strengths of the two attacks that he required just 11 overs to reach 50 while Warwickshire opener Nick Knight laboured for 65 over his.

Ward looked in good touch too and it was a surprise when the left-hander was lbw to Naqaash Tahir's yorker, not least to Ward himself who clearly felt he had got some bat on the ball first as he dragged himself with some reluctance from the crease.