1st Test England v Pakistan, Lord's 14-18 July

[sussexpob]

Sussex are mid table in div 2 and they were expected to get promoted easily 2 season ago they were close to winning the county championship.

The only domestic player to have played a test batting for England is currently averaging nearly 80...... despite turning 38 soon. Our best bowler is still taking wickets under 25 depsite being 37. Our three other internationals for England (Wright/Shehzad and Jordan) have played under a third of matches they could have.

[Dr Cricket]

if they not playing that is really Sussex fault or the players fault for not wanting to play county championship games, also if the gap is really big between div 1 or div 2 Sussex should cope with missing 3-4 players.

[sussexpob]

if they not playing that is really Sussex fault or the players fault for not wanting to play county championship games, also if the gap is really big between div 1 or div 2 Sussex should cope with missing 3-4 players.

The first game was rained off with Sussex not even facing a ball......
The second game Sussex had three wickets left to get defending a 100 runs in a rain effected match....
Third game was another rain affected affair.... just over 20 wickets fell in 4 days
Fourth game Sussex had a 270 run first innings lead..... rain affected game, Derbyshire escaped in a game they would have lost heavily
Fifth game.... Sussex were setting Worcs 200-250 to win, never seen the 4th innings..... could have gone either way
Sixth game.... Sussex win by 10 wickets in a game they totally dominated from ball one
Seventh game.... rain affected. Game called off two wickets down on third innings..... Sussex were well behind though, so in this instance it works to their advantage
Eigth game..... Game ends with Glamorgan 70 runs ahead and three wickets remaining, on a pitch that had given 320 all out, 550/5 and 300/7.... Sussex should have won
Ninth game.... ongoing

Sussex are currently the only undefeated team in the league. Without weather they would have won more games.

[sussexpob]

But this is not the point. The point is how well they are doing against Div 1 to Div 2 rivals.

Out of the established players.

Joyce is averaging near 80 this year
Nash is averaging 65
Wells is averaging 53
Ross Taylor is averaging 30
Luke Wright has not been fully fit and has hardly played.... just scored 60 in his second game
Ben Brown averaging 45

All of these bar Taylor (and Wright as he hasnt played) have performed much higher than their career averages.

Bowlers
Magoffin - Averaging 25, but as I said, a decline is expected as he is 37 soon
Shehzad - Having a horror year.... but its generally well known that he cant get fit. Has consistent injury and form issues all career.
Robinson - Having a bad year. But then again, take away his first few games at Sussex and his bowling was becoming useless last year too.
Whittingham - First year, averaging sub 30

[sussexpob]

Probably worth mentioning too that not many clubs have had two highly rated youngsters tragically lost like Sussex have had to deal with. Hobden tragically died, Mills 4 day career ended. These were supposed to be long term replacements. Shehzad was averaging under 20 with the ball last year but his season ended in late May.

In fact, I would challenge anyone to match just how many players Sussex have lost for various reasons , in such a short space of time. At one point last year we had to loan 5 different bowlers from otehr clubs. The people replacing the people who replaced the first team all got injured. And a lot of players just havent come looking the same.

Even someone like Garton, who is in the Lions squad, cant get through more than a T20 at the moment.

[Dr Cricket]

Yep sussex been quite unlucky with injuries in recent times.

[Dr Cricket]

because of the crap cricket rating in recent times on sky, sky sports doing cross promotion with cook and anderson commentating on the darts today and having a darts game, believe the game was organised last minute as well.
http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sp ... e-re-match

Saying that both are actually decent dart players.

[Dr Cricket]

cook wins again

[Arthur Crabtree]

Arthur that is lot of hogwash really considering lancashire won county championship and then relegated.
.

It's an established trend. Hogwash is overstating it a little. It isn't really an original idea that there is a leap in quality between the divisions. It's a pretty widely held view.

[Dr Cricket]

if you watching today cricket you would think Northants is the div 1 side.

[braveneutral]

There's a gap.

Northants are white ball specialists. Like Gloucestershire of the late nineties but not quite the same level.

[Aidan11]

because of the crap cricket rating in recent times on sky, sky sports doing cross promotion with cook and anderson commentating on the darts today and having a darts game, believe the game was organised last minute as well.
http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sp ... e-re-match

Saying that both are actually decent dart players.

It was a strange sight to see two darts players who actually looked like athletes rather than a couple of blokes down the local boozer.

[Making_Splinters]

Arthur that is lot of hogwash really considering lancashire won county championship and then relegated.
.

It's an established trend. Hogwash is overstating it a little. It isn't really an original idea that there is a leap in quality between the divisions. It's a pretty widely held view.

Indeed, Arthur. There's a massive gap in quality between the top of Division 1 and the bottom of Division 2 particularly in terms of the bowling which has a knock on effect on the batting, as for Lancashire a season of huge over performance followed up by a season of massive under performance.