LANCASHIRE coach Dav Whatmore today pledged to dig out the reasons for yesterday's NatWest Trophy defeat by Sussex - and put them right in the Championship.

The crushing seven wicket loss, to a Sussex side which hadn't beaten another first class county since May 25, continued a disastrous season which also saw them slip out of the Benson and Hedges Cup in the group stages.

"It is not nice to come into a side which won both one-day competitions the previous year and then goes out early of both," admitted Whatmore.

"But I am a realist - there are some good reasons for those results, and some things for us to put right, especially in the Championship.

"We have a week without another game to look into what has happened. And there is some light at the end of the tunnel."

The light comes from the last two Championship games which Lancashire have won to climb away from the bottom of the table.

And also in the Sunday League, where they are joint top with Essex and Kent and still in title contention.

But for the moment those minor successes are easily outweighed by the failures this summer.

It is still unfair to blame Whatmore, who has not had time to make any significant changes to the club's playing staff. Next season will be the time to judge the Australian, who was clearly as devastated as the players by yesterday's defeat.

The reason behind the loss, just as in the B&H losses to Yorkshire and Derbyshire, was simple: the Lancashire players were unable to reproduce the one-day heroics of last year.

They weren't helped by the surprising behaviour of the Hove pitch in the first hour, as the ball moved around for the Sussex seamers and Lancashire slipped to 38-4. They recovered well to post 283-6 thanks to John Crawley's superb unbeaten 113, and 97 from Ian Austin, with the pair sharing a NatWest record sixth wicket stand of 178 before Austin was caught on the boundary off the last ball of the innings going for the century he richly deserved.

But that was still 30 runs short of a good total as the pitch flattened out - leaving Lancashire to regret their decision to bat first, and also a little complacency in the closing overs as Crawley and Austin both tried to reach three figures rather than really savage the Sussex attack.

Lancashire needed to bowl to their absolute best, but suffered a cruel injury blow when Glen Chapple bent double in pain at the start of his fifth over with a rib injury apparently unrelated to the stomach muscle problem which had made him so doubtful for the match.

Andrew Flintoff was forced into action and conceded only 21 runs from 5.5 overs, while Austin and Peter Martin also returned tidy figures. But the Sussex batsmen plundered Gary Yates for 73 runs off 10 overs with Keith Greenfield leading the attack on the Lancashire off-spinner to hit 129, the best innings of his career, and Mark Newell completed the victory with almost four overs to spare.

Padiham professional Mark Harvey hit 92 as Lancashire seconds posted 365-7 declared at Haslinden. The Kent reply stood on 44-0.

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