It is never going to be easy to replace the experience of Luke Wright and Chris Nash before the start of any game. There was hope they would be fit when named in a 14-man squad for the first game of the new Specsavers County Championship. Matt Machin and Harry Finch are by no means inferior players, Machin has been to world cups with Scotland and has been in and around the first team since 2010. Finch is an up and coming batsman who has been on the fringes for a while. Only last week he scored his first Sussex hundred against Leeds/Bradford MCCU.
One selection that did kind of surprise people was George Garton who was preferred over the solid medium-fast bowling of Lewis Hatchett. Sometimes it is a hard call to go for youth over experience, (Hatchett is still only 26 it should be added) and it is a hunch that looks like it will pay off.
The new regulation that allows the away team to choose to field first is an interesting idea. Of the six games that started on Sunday, only one side chose to turn this offer down. Sussex may have wished that they hadn’t. The game at Northampton started half an hour late, but Northamptonshire’s openers Ben Duckett and the on-loan Jake Libby came out to bat under clear blue skies.
As Ben Brown lead his team out it seemed like a good option, it soon looked like they had been suckered into making the wrong decision. Libby has got history with Sussex. On his championship debut for Nottinghamshire in 2014 he scored a near faultless hundred on a flat Trent Bridge pitch.
It looked like he was going to do that again here; he was dropped at slip by Ross Taylor to what is usually a routine catch at knee height. It was a rare movement where something happened for the Sussex bowlers. There was so little assistance on offer that Danny Briggs was bowling his left-arm spin in tandem with the part-time leg spin of Luke Wells before lunch. It is not often you can say that has happened on the first day of the season.
It was Duckett who impressed with the bat for Northants. At 21 and more than a capable wicket-keeper he has had to adapt his game as Adam Rossington is the man tasked with keeping wicket for Northamptonshire. Since being given the task of opening the batting he has been unstoppable.
There were moments when he took risks that evaded the Sussex field and it wasn’t long before a third-man was put in place as a number of cuts and slashes found their way down to that boundary.
It is far too early to talk of England selection, although I have seen at least one person mention it off the back off this innings. Some may suggest that playing for a second division team won’t help, as Northamptonshire know all too well to their cost as they have lost both Jack Brooks and David Willey as they bid to play for England.
Duckett has adapted well to opening the batting there is no doubt about it, he is a player who likes to play shots, and is kind of the player England are looking for to open the batting alongside someone like Alastair Cook. Duckett is only 18 runs off a triple-century. The next step is to keep scoring big. One other option would be to keep badgering people to keep. As that is also another area England haven’t tied one player down. Although opening and keeping in the test match is incredibly difficult.
On day two Sussex have fought back, and George Garton was at the centre of it. There were some grumblings among some Sussex fans that he was chosen over Hatchett, I wasn’t one of them. Garton had a good under-19 world cup for England and looks a great prospect and just days away from his 19th birthday, he seems level headed for one so young and isn’t afraid to bowl Yorkers.
One of the remits given to Mark Davies the new Sussex coach was to bring through more young players and that is what he is doing with Garton. Sussex haven’t produced enough bowlers in recent years and have brought them in from other places mainly in an attempt to resurrect careers.
Garton took three wickets on day two, the first couple bowled as well. With Steve Magoffin and Ollie Robinson, the attack is well lead, with the prospect of Chris Jordan and Ajmal Shahzad (if injury free) Sussex have the making of an attack that can get Sussex back into division one.
