Alex Carey in 15-man squad for Championship resumption

A break in the Vitality Blast schedule sees Sussex resume their Specsavers County Championship campaign against Middlesex at The 1st Central County Ground on Sunday.

Jason Gillespie has named a 15-man squad for the match that includes a number of new faces.

Alex Carey has been given permission to play in the fixture by Cricket Australia. Meanwhile, pathway batsman and England Under-19 international Tom Clark, as well as Loughborough MCCU graduate and second-team player Elliot Hooper are also included.

Having made his first-class debut in Sussex’s draw with Glamorgan in May, Jared Warner returns to the squad having been re-signed on loan from Yorkshire.

Delray Rawlins is unavailable as a result of his international call up by Bermuda for the ICC T20 World Cup Americas Qualifiers.

George Garton (side), Will Sheffield (knee) and Stiaan van Zyl (elbow) remain unavailable through injury.

Speaking ahead of his side’s return to first-class action, Gillespie said: “Everyone’s looking forward to it. Our last few four-day games haven’t gone as we would have liked but we’ve had a bit of a break during the T20 Blast and it’ll be great to get back out there, perform strongly and put on a show for our supporters.

“We wanted to keep our options open and make sure the guys playing in the Blast are fit and firing and ready to go come Sunday.  Hence, we’ve named an extended squad, with a couple of new faces in Tom Clark and Elliot Hooper and the return of Tom Haines, Harry Finch and Danny Briggs.

“Alex Carey is a great ‘in’ for us, most certainly. He’s fitted in really well at Sussex and to have him available for a Championship match is just fantastic. He can enjoy a bit of a run around in the field with the captain behind the sticks and enjoy playing first-class cricket in England and most importantly at a beautiful ground like Hove.”

With four matches to play, Sussex find themselves in eighth place in division two on 100 points. There remains plenty to play for, however, with the side just 29 points behind the sides in both third and second place. 

Sussex Squad

Ben Brown (capt./wk), Will Beer, Danny Briggs, Alex Carey, Tom Clark, Harry Finch, Tom Haines, Elliot Hooper, Chris Jordan, Ollie Robinson, Abi Sakande, Phil Salt, Jared Warner, Luke Wells, David Wiese

Opposition

Middlesex are in sixth place in a very congested second division having won three, lost two and drawn five of their ten matches. Their 114 points puts them just 15 points off both second and third place.

Stuart Law’s men have won their last two Championship matches against Gloucestershire and Glamorgan to keep them in the hunt for promotion. After a barren start to the season, Toby Roland-Jones reminded everyone of his class by taking 19 wickets across those two matches. He is Middlesex’s joint second-highest Championship wicket-taker this season - alongside Tom Helm – with 24 dismissals. It is the evergreen Tim Murtagh that leads the way, however, with 33 wickets.

Dawid Malan is the team’s top-scorer with 885 runs from his 15 innings so far. That makes him the second highest run-scorer in the division and the third-highest run scorer in the competition overall. He made his fourth hundred and third score of 150 or more of the campaign when he made 166 in Middlesex’s last game against Glamorgan. Sam Robson’s unbeaten 140 in the same match took him to 590 for the season and into second place in the team’s run scoring list. 

Match Information

Sussex v Middlesex at The 1st Central County Ground from Sunday 18th August to Wednesday 21st August. Play is scheduled to begin at 11am on all four days. Gates open at 9.30am.

Print at home tickets are available to buy online for each day’s play up until gates open on the day in question.

Thereafter, paper tickets can be purchased in person from the Eaton Road entrance of The 1st Central County Ground.

Supporters who are unable to make it to The 1st Central County Ground will be able to watch every ball live accompanied by ball-by-ball commentary from BBC Sussex via the FREE live stream on the Sussex Cricket Match Day Centre.

The Match Day Centre also includes a live scorecard, live statistics and text commentary via the @SussexCCC twitter account.