Ian Bell made a duck in Warwickshire's first innings but rose defiantly in the second, carrying his bat for 144 on the second day. Photograph: Michael Steele/Getty Images  Sussex's Edgbaston hex appears to have struck again after Ian Bell's 46th first-class hundred turned this match on its head.  Try as they might, Sussex simply cannot buy a County Championship win in Birmingham, having claimed only one in the past 53 years. Their bid to break the hoodoo has even resulted in them superstitiously shifting hotels. Having booked in at the establishment in which they resided after winning the Twenty20 Cup here in 2009, they must have thought they had cracked it upon dismissing their opponents on the first morning.  The England batsman Bell made a duck in Warwickshire's lowest Championship total since the 1990s, and so arrived on a pair 24 hours later with the team he is leading in the absence of the injured Jim Troughton still 98 runs in arrears. He rose to the challenge in typically elegant fashion, passing 16,000 first-class runs with his first scoring stroke, a straight-driven four, and celebrating three figures shortly after tea.  "One thing maybe in my early days was that I scored a lot of runs that looked good on the eye but really didn't change the course of a game," said Bell. "Over the last few years I have started to do that a lot more often."  Not long after his arrival in the middle his international colleague Jonathan Trott – whose perceived susceptibility against the short ball encouraged Sussex to bump him with regularity – departed. It was on this very ground during a one-day international last summer that Mitchell Johnson clunked Trott on the helmet to give the theory its origins. Here, a rather less heralded Australian, Steve Magoffin, repeated the trick and Trott later wore one from Chris Jordan before an attempted hook off the same bowler spooned tamely to square-leg. He can expect more of the same in the coming weeks.  Trott remains intent on winning back the England place he vacated one-fifth of the way through the winter Ashes debacle. But Bell appears favourite to bat No3 in the summer's first Test against Sri Lanka, and he made his opponents pay for shelling the one chance he offered – a low stinger to Ed Joyce in the gully when on 23.  A 62-ball half-century took Warwickshire into credit four wickets down and even though his alliance with Chris Woakes was terminated in Jordan's post-lunch burst, things still appeared tickety-boo while he remained at the crease. The scales of power were being tilted with every peerless cover drive and the determination to build a defendable score was evident in Bell's sixth-wicket partner Rikki Clarke battling a suspected broken finger for the latter part of a 132-run stand.  The majority of Clarke's strokes during that period were one-handed and it was from such a swish that he perished when the wicketkeeper Ben Brown clung on to a leg-side strangle. Keith Barker followed to the second new ball but Bell was kept company until the close by the free-scoring Jeetan Patel, who will be expected to exploit the footholes of a wearing surface against Sussex's seven left-handers in the fourth innings.  Whatever happens from here, the visitors will have work to do for a first win in this city since 1982.
Ian Bell, Warwickshire's top-order batsman, was imperious in his intent of thwarting Sussex's thoughts of a victory at Edgbaston