Kent lead by 27 runs with eight second-innings wickets in hand against Delray Rawlins’s Sussex after two days of their LV= Insurance Championship encounter with at the 1st Central County Ground in Hove.

Sussex were dismissed for 256 earlier in the day for a first-innings lead of 111, with Stiaan van Zyl the top bat with 52 off 83 balls. Middle-order pair Tom Clark and captain Ben Brown added 42 and 34 respectively.

Rawlins fell to a contentious leg-before decision to a ball from seamer Matthew Quinn, the left-hander scoring six from 23 balls in a more subdued innings that lasted 39 minutes.

Quinn, a 28-year-old New Zealander who is on a four-match loan spell from champions Essex, looked fortunate to claim his first wicket as the ball that accounted for Rawlins appeared to have pitched outside leg and hit him high.

However, George Garton (17) and Jofra Archer (2) were both later beaten by good balls that moved away sharply off the seam as Quinn claimed two more wickets before finishing off the innings when Ollie Robinson (25) holed out to deep mid-wicket.

Zak Crawley scored a season-high 90 for Kent against Yorkshire last week and again the 23-year-old England batsman looked in good form, facing 101 balls and hitting seven fours. Three of the boundaries came in one over from off spinner Jack Carson.

Jack Leaning, who top-scored in the first innings with 63, is on 18 from 66 balls, his 80-minute stand with Crawley producing 79 runs for the unbroken third wicket.

Rawlins, the fourth Sussex bowler used, had a good spell with his left-arm spin as he troubled Crawley. He did not take a wicket but gave up just 27 runs off 11 overs as new-ball pair Robinson and Archer took a wicket each.

Archer struck in the fifth and final over of his only spell when a big inswinger accounted for Jordan Cox (12), while Robinson had captain Daniel Bell-Drummond (27) caught at third slip.

Ian Salisbury, the Sussex coach, is pleased with the way his team has performed in the first two days.

“It’s a really good cricket wicket,” he told to the official Sussex website. “We battled hard for every run in the first innings then in the last session Zak Crawley played extremely well.

“They are 27 ahead but it’s game on, especially if we can get a couple of early wickets.”