We describe precisely, under generic conditions, the contact of the accessibility set at time $T$ with an abnormal direction, first for a single-input affine control system with constraint on the control, and then as an application for a sub-Riemannian system of rank 2. As a consequence we obtain in sub-Riemannian geometry a new splitting-up of the sphere near an abnormal minimizer $\gamma$ into two sectors, bordered by the first Pontryagin's cone along $\gamma$, called the $L^\infty$-sector and the $L^2$-sector. Moreover we find again necessary and sufficient conditions of optimality of an abnormal trajectory for such systems, for any optimization problem.