Interesting Sussex couldn’t quite bring themselves to play Salt, Head and Bopara in the final. That would have been ra step too far I imagine.

It’s more complicated than citizenship now though. It’s not just a case of having a passport.
You need citizenship, and either to have lived permanently in the uk for 3 years. Or not played as a domestic player in another national competition for 3 years..

I will admit though, I’m not a fan of all the South African imports coming over as domestic players. I don’t see why we can’t produce local players from the county. It costs more to nurture a player from 9/10 through to the squad, but it’s how it’s supposed to work. Getting in South Africans at 18/19 who couldn’t make it on SA for whatever reason, seems wrong.
And at the end if the day, young British talent loses; and South African elite sport loses

They’ve taken full advantage of hosting the event, knowing that none of their players will struggle to get to Hove for their Blast match the next day.
Whilst Warwickshire and Middlesex can’t do the same thing as they have Blast matches tonight, and Yorkshire are hardly going to make any of their first XI travel all the way down on their sole day in between matches.
So it’s fair to say Sussex are big favourites now, but I expect the matches to be high scoring. As it’s usually a very flat pitch at Arundel and there won’t be any bowlers of note in any of the teams.

Sussex are hardly playing fair in this. They’ve named a squad that includes Luke Wright, Ravi Bopara, Phil Salt, Travis Head, and Delray Rawlins. If you include Aaron Thomason, Stuart Meaker and Henry Crocombe, that’s 9 players who have played in their T20 first XI this year.
They’ve not included any of their first choice bowlers though, which is very sporting of them.

They’re dropping like flies.
Yates has been ill a while now. Hope it’s nothing serious.

Henry is out of contract at the end of this season. He is young and very raw, but huge potential.
He was superb in white ball last year, has never been as good at red ball, but still a very decent player.
However, he has injury issues, very rarely goes through a season without an injury or 2.
No first team matches this year so far, not great performances in second team. Plus with Stone and Norwell also highly injury prone, I wonder if the club consider how many players like that they can have on staff.
I personally want him to stay, but will be interesting to see what does happen. Because he’ll have been able to talk to other teams now. And there will be other suitors out there. Could end up being a decision for Henry rather than the club, especially if the team continues to succeed without him, and he isn’t playing.

I couldn’t think Curran is more overrated if I wanted to.
He’s so limited, that he only plays in ideal conditions, perfectly suited to him. Because if he bowls 75mph, from 5,6” and it didn’t swing on a good deck, he’d be blasted out the ground in most places.
He gets the most ridiculous levels of protection, and the huge Surrey talk up from the Alec Stewart PR machine.
Woakes is 10 times the player Curran is, but I just think he’s less glamorous, gets much less of a talk up, and doesn’t rock the boat.

The openers just started off this chase far too slowly. Put everyone behind them under pressure to catch it up later.

We seem to have this trouble regularly over the last few years, openers are inconsistent and don’t take full advantage of the power play, they catch up in the middle a bit, but just lose wickets at the end as they just have to hit out to try and get 12 or more an over.
A shame, as this was definitely achievable with a good start,

What does Lintott testing positive mean for the rest of the squad? Will they all need to undergo testing? I’m not sure what the process is.

Excellent win. Bowlers learnt their lesson from Leicester. Gave them no pace, made them hit to the long square boundaries.

Be interesting to see if Burgess and Inglis end up with a fine or some sort of disciplinary warning. They seemed to be going at each other when Inglis got out. Umpires getting involved usually means a write up of some sort.

I hope the bowlers watched that. Drag that length back, bowl cutters and don’t give them pace and it’s hard to score.
But we struggled at the end again because we lost set batsmen with 4 overs to go again. Looks a difficult pitch to start on, but once you get in, you can score runs.

Excellent win. The spin triplets are really doing the job. The pressure Briggs puts on in the powerplay is excellent.

Really nice for the net run rate too.

Let’s see if 170 is enough. Malan finally scored some runs which is good.
Ironically though, Brathwaite came in and stalled things there. He never really got going, so 15 probably runs left out there I reckon.

Did anyone ever find out what happened to Van Vollenhoven? Had a great knock then disappeared.

Benjamin out cheaply today as well, 2 off 4.

Interesting to see Lamb opening. If Malan doesn’t score today, is he the next option whilst Hose is injured?

Yeah overseas provide the chance to players to learn from their experience, but that’s supposed to be learnt by batting with them, or showing them how to go about a chase etc. That’s very difficult when he scores less than any other batsman. At the end of the day, it’s all about the runs.
I’m sure there’s positives they can take like he’ll act like a good pro, train well etc. But to be honest you’d expect most of our side to understand that already, and definitely get it from the likes of Bresnan or OHD.
Also interesting to here Mousley talk about Hain and Burgess keeping him calm at the crease and talking through the plans. Those 2 seem to have both matured nicely in regards of contributions and leadership in both formats this season.

At least Malan is consistent.
It wasn’t the best but sometimes you just need to find a way to win. Especially in this format.

Exiled Bear wrote:

Isn’t Brookes injured?

He is indeed, a thigh injury I believe. Otherwise he’s definitely in this side. Was excellent in this competition last year. The faster they get him back fully fit, the better.

Apparently the ECB medical and fitness staff were present and spent a lot of time with Woakes during the second team match he bowled in.
The decision to leave him out was from the ECB, though they have potentially cleared him for the next 2 matches.
Conveniently, he has also just been named in England’s T20 squad.

Excellent performance by all. Great win.

1 thing, I would like to see Brookes back ASAP. If that had been closer, I’d be concerned about who’d bowl the death overs. Brookes was so good at that last year.

I would love to know what’s gone on with Woakes. This is his chance to shine. All the other England white ball players are playing except him. Notts will have Hales tonight.
It’s very strange.