A century for Ben Brown on day one of match against Loughborough students

Ben Brown started his tenure as Sussex club captain with a century on day one of the first-class match against Loughborough MCCU at The 1st Central County Ground.

Harry Finch and Will Beer both made half centuries as Sussex recovered from a tricky start against an attack that Brown described as the best he had encountered in MCC University matches.

Aware that conditions were most-suited to the bowlers but also that time in the game was likely to be at a premium thanks to the forecasted weather, Sussex skipper Ben Brown, having won the toss, decided that time in the middle for his batsmen would be of most value.

The Loughborough new-ball pairing of Chris Sanders and Will Pereira proved a handful as they generated significant movement through the air and took advantage of the low bounce of this early-season wicket.

Both Phil Salt and Luke Wells were undone early-on by swinging deliveries that snuck between bat and pad and crashed into the wicket, with Sanders’ ball to Wells particularly tough to deal with.

Left-armer, Pereira soon found himself with two for very few on his first-class debut when Michael Burgess picked out Oliver Soames at point to leave Sussex struggling on 41-3.

Finch and Laurie Evans lay the foundations of a recovery with a 40-run fourth wicket partnership, but the loss of Evans and then Luke Wright had Sussex looking shaky once more at 98-5 just before lunch.

The afternoon session saw the momentum shift towards the home side with Finch and Brown both bringing up their fifties and putting on the vast majority of their 85-run sixth-wicket partnership.

Finch’s was the only wicket to fall between lunch and tea. It came about thanks to an excellent bit of fielding from Andrew Rishton whose laser-accurate throw from the square leg boundary found the stumps with Finch short of his ground.

On reflection, it was probably the one way the students were going to get rid of Finch. He had looked untroubled throughout his 148-ball stay at the crease, including when the ball was swinging all over the place early on. That's not to say he didn't have to graft, but his shot selection and compact style of play served him well.

With Finch gone, Brown carried on watchfully, picking gaps and steadily accumulating runs as Ollie Robinson and then Will Beer offered support.

The second new-ball offered far fewer problems for the batsmen, with the students showing the effects of a long day of charging in on the spongy run-ups. Both Brown and Beer took the opportunity to play with a little more freedom.

Brown’s only real error came when, sweeping in search of the boundary that would take him to his hundred, he was dropped at deep square leg on 96. He reached the landmark two balls later courtesy of a top-edge over the slips that raced away to the third-man fence.

This was Brown’s 14th first-class century and the fact that it came off 181 balls of hard graft including just nine fours was testament to the quality of Loughborough’s bowling throughout the day. This was no gimme.

Brown and Beer then went past a hundred for the eighth wicket, before the leg-spinner brought up a maiden first-class fifty in his 15th match with the final ball of the day, the captain unbeaten on 119.