WITH home games against their two closest rivals coming up, Durham forged 29 points clear at the top of the LV County Championship yesterday.

They wrapped up their sixth win in eight games at Arundel when they beat Sussex by 178 runs after the door was prised open immediately after lunch by spinners Scott Borthwick and Ryan Pringle.

Borthwick came into the match with only three championship wickets to his name this season but finished with four for 46, his best figures for two years.

For the second successive match there were also five victims in the second innings for Michael Richardson, which included a stumping.

Durham have played a game more than second-placed Warwickshire and two more than Yorkshire, their next opponents starting on Sunday week. The Bears visit a week later.

With eight wickets needed on the final day, Durham took only two in the morning and it was starting to look as though everything would hinge on the second new ball, which was due in six overs.

Borthwick had not been introduced until the 68th over but he and Pringle continued after lunch and in the fifth over the off-spinner snared Luke Wells for 108.

The left-hander edged a drive and was caught low down at slip by Paul Collingwood, who was spared a decision over whether to take the new ball when Borthwick struck in the next over.

Luke Wright, who had been untroubled in making 49, shaped to drive through extra cover and appeared to be deceived in the flight as the ball lobbed off the inside of his bat and Borthwick dived to his right to hold the catch.

Ajmal Shahzad made only two before going down the pitch for Richardson to take great delight in pulling off the stumping. He then held on to George Dockrell's edge and four wickets had gone down for 14 runs.

There was a danger of over-excitement and a possible ticking-off as Pringle had two huge appeals turned down by Jeremy Lloyds.

The umpire may not have been impressed by Durham's reaction when Wells was given not out on 13, when video evidence seemed to confirm their conviction that he was caught behind.

The bowler was Chris Rushworth, who after his six in the first innings remained wicketless for the first time since the first innings at Taunton in the opening match of the season.

Pringle bowled well but had to settle for figures of one for 54 from 28 overs and after his second big disappointment Collingwood decided to take the new ball 17 overs after it was due.

Graham Onions immediately struck by having Steve Magoffin well caught at third slip by Gordon Muchall, but Ben Brown proceeded comfortably to 60 with help from last man Tim Linley.

It was hard to see how Lloyds could turn down an lbw appeal from John Hastings with Linley on six, but 12 overs of the new ball cost 58 before the spinners returned and Borthwick had Brown lbw to end the stand of 64.

Victory appeared to be slipping away at lunchtime, at which point Wells and Wright had put on 73.

Wells, who made his maiden century at Chester-le-Street four years ago, was on 53 overnight and scored most of yesterday's runs through straight drives.

On a glorious morning, Durham's greatest cause for hope in the early overs came when a ball from Hastings hardly left the parched earth.

But it proved a false alarm for Sussex as the pitch played much as it had the previous day, when only six wickets fell and three of those were given away by Durham batsmen in a hurry.

Durham gave Hastings the Castle End, where the vast majority of wickets had fallen, and after moving one off the pitch to have Ed Joyce caught behind in his third over he kept bounding in for an hour.

He beat Wells several times, but nothing got past the bat from the other end and it was a surprise when Chris Nash chipped Onions to mid-on.

When Paul Coughlin replaced Onions his third ball beat Wells and the fourth was edged just short of Borthwick's right hand at second slip.

Wells drove a Borthwick full toss for his 18th four to reach 100 off 216 balls and as he used his height and reach to get forward the leg-spinner tended to over-pitch.

He improved markedly once Pringle made the breakthrough, but while he might benefit from bowling 18 overs he is unlikely to get the same chance in the big home games to come. They will go a long way towards deciding the title.