Half-centuries for Matthew Wood and Michael Lumb in Yorkshire's dull draw with India A at Headingley yesterday kept the pair neck-and-neck in their race to become the county's first batsman to reach 1,000 first-class runs this season.

Wood's painstaking 88 took him to 727 runs at an average of 55.92 while Lumb's rather more fluent 56 pushed his aggregate on to 799 for an average of 63.54.

Starting the final day 63 runs in arrears at 27 for one, Yorkshire struggled throughout the morning and never looked the slightest bit interested in trying to set the Tourists a challenging target.

India rightly maintained a keen attack with the result that Yorkshire batted all day before declaring on 296 for six to end the match 206 in front.

Vic Craven, needing runs to get back into Championship contention, played some aggressive strokes in making 46 before being bowled by Murali Kartik, but Wood looked out of sorts and could only scrape together 30 during the two-hour morning session.

He brightened up in the afternoon but could not match the quality of strokeplay of Lumb, who pulled a full toss from Amit Mishra for six on his way to his second half-century of the game.

The pair had put on 104 in 30 overs when Lumb was out tamely, driving Lakshmipathy Balaji gently into the hands of Wasim Jaffer at mid-off.

One thing which Wood did not lack was patience and he seemed to be drifting towards his third century of the season until Kartik came on for a new spell and his first ball had him caught behind after he had hung around for four hours and 20 minutes, facing 201 balls and hitting 16 fours.

In the next over from Balaji, Gary Fellows got an inside edge to the wicketkeeper and soon after tea Richard Blakey attempted to cut Kartik's arm ball and was bowled, but the fall of a couple of wickets came too late to inject any life into the dying game.

Craig White and Andy Gray hung around until the close, White declining to play any positive strokes at all in limping to 21 off 85 balls in 28 grinding overs.

* Paul Grayson, Andy Flower and Aftab Habib all compiled solid half-centuries to help Essex build a useful lead of 235 against second-placed Sussex in Frizzell County Championship Division One.

The visitors, 19 behind on first innings, reached 254 for six at stumps and shade the honours.

Sussex, earlier bowled out for 359, were made to work hard for their wickets but off-spinner Mark Davis stuck to his task to finish the day with three for 44 from 19 overs.