Brooks brings down the blinds on Sussex

Since this match was played during the university term, the large press box at Headingley, which is situated in a complex owned by Leeds Beckett University, was being used for lectures on the final day of this game.

Thus, while the mighty Yorkshire bowling attack sent Sussex's rather stunned cricketers down to the Second Division, students sat in serried rows with the blinds firmly down in the Kilner Auditorium and listened to no doubt worthy lectures on important subjects such as thermodynamics or computer science.

Quite right too, perhaps, but for the undergraduates, many of whom were keen cricket fans, it must have been frustration itself. Jack Brooks removed the top three in Sussex's order in one of the finer new-ball spells you will see and all they could hear were muffled cheers amid the theorems. "There's music in the names I used to know / And magic when I heard them long ago", wrote Thomas Moult in "The Names", a golden age poem written in the persona of a cricket-loving adult remembering his schooldays.

Certainly drama students might have learned something from watching the cricket on this last day of the season. Sussex began their innings needing to bat out 92 overs for the draw or score 309 runs to win. The achievement of either goal would have prolonged their five-year stay in the First Division, but they never looked like reaching either objective. Yorkshire's bowlers saw to that.

First it was Brooks, cruising in as smoothly as a sports car from the Kirkstall Lane. First he bowled a swinging full toss at the dreadfully out-of-form Ed Joyce and the Sussex skipper inside-edged it onto his stumps; then makeshift opener Chris Jordan was leg before on the back foot for 20; and in what was only Brooks's sixth over, Matt Machan chased a wideish ball and feathered a catch to Jonny Bairstow. Sussex were 39 for 3 in the 12th over and there was already a horrid gash below their waterline.

The crowd at Headingley enjoyed it all hugely, of course, but the students in their lecture theatre, whatever they were thinking, saw none of it. "Drone on, O teacher, you can't trouble me," Moult's poem continues. "If you choose to keep us here while cricket's in the air, / You must expect our minds to wander down the roads to Leicester, Lord's and Leeds ..."

And at Leeds this final morning, things got rapidly worse for Sussex as Tim Bresnan joined in the fun. He bowled Chris Nash through the gate for 17 and induced Luke Wright to drive most unwisely at a wider delivery of full length. Sussex were 63 for 5 at lunch and the writing was as clear upon the walls as the equations were on the flip-charts. When you only win one of your final 11 games, as Sussex have done, you are going to struggle; and when your seam bowlers - James Anyon, Ajmal Shahzad, Chris Jordan - are not fit for most or all of the season, while your batsmen are not in form, you are going to find it desperately hard.

Hampshire may have produced a great escape worthy of Steve McQueen on his motorbike but Sussex's relegation is hardly an enormous surprise.

There was some resistance, though, and it came from Michael Yardy, who was batting for the final time in his career, and Ben Brown, who passed a thousand runs for the season during his innings of 42. The pair added 79 in 20 overs that offered some hope that a defence worthy of mythology might be mounted. Their partnership stretched deep into the afternoon, by which time a party of schoolchildren had joined the crowd, a splash of purple amid the dark anoraks and fleeces.

Indeed, many spectators at Headingley probably had mixed feelings this final afternoon. They were watching their team achieve a record 11th Championship victory and win the First Division by 68 points, which is greater than the margin between runners-up Middlesex and bottom-placed Worcestershire. This is a great Yorkshire team and it must be a wonderful time to follow the White Rose.

At the same time there were many who might empathise with the phrase Gone With The Cricketers, the evocative title chosen by the John Arlott for one of his books. For it connotes not just a physical presence but a deeper commitment. "Where's John?" friends would ask Arlott's mother, only to receive the answer: "Oh, he's gone with the cricketers." And so he was, for much of the rest of his life.

And so they were at Headingley when they stood to applaud Yardy as he left first-class cricket after gloving an attempted hook to Alex Lees at first slip. There was no more touching sight than the Yorkshire team queueing up to shake the hand of the player they had just dismissed.

Yardy's dismissal by Bresnan for 41 was followed twelve balls later by that of Brown, the Sussex wicketkeeper clipping Adil Rashid straight to short leg, where Jack Leaning grabbed a brilliant catch. That left Sussex on 142 for 7 and, although the last three wickets took a shade under an hour to fall, there was now no doubt which way the river was flowing. Rashid helped himself to a couple more scalps and Adam Lyth, on his 28th birthday, had Ashar Zaidi leg before for 47.

At ten past three Chris Liddle was plumb enough to Rashid and the celebrations began on the outfield even as the dull realisation sunk in among the Sussex players. Dickie Bird presented the County Championship trophy to Andrew Gale, who has now received it three times in successive games. Mark Robinson, the Sussex coach, offered dignified congratulations to both Yorkshire and Hampshire; he refused to make elaborate excuses; he is a cricket man.

The supporters gathered on the outfield and watched their players begin the latest of what have already been many celebrations. And, as is often the case at this time of year, the spectators were slow to leave, reluctant, perhaps, to leave one home for another. Eventually they drifted away, though, and soon they must follow the different rhythms of autumn. But it will not be long before they are thinking of next April when there will be music in the names once again and we shall be gone with the cricketers.