Essex vs Sussex | Day Four

Sussex took an hour and 20 minutes and 21 overs to wrap up the last three Essex wickets and complete a 47-run victory that lifts them clear of any lingering worries about relegation from Division One of the Rothesay County Championship.

However, they met stern resistance from Essex all-rounder Matt Critchley who batted for three-and-a-half hours in defying Sussex’s efforts. He was eventually last man out when he popped up a catch to slip off James Coles for 96 from 132 balls.

It was the third time this season Critchley, who has 838 Championship runs to his name, has been out in the nineties. His innings included two sixes and eight fours.

Shane Snater had given Essex some hope, hitting two sixes himself in a 45-ball cameo that put on 48 for the ninth wicket, but it was merely brief entertainment for the sizeable crowd who had turned up in the hope of a miracle that didn’t happen

Essex had started the fourth day under bright, clear skies needing another 132 for an unlikely victory.

With all day available to them, Critchley and Mitch Killeen suggested they might tackle the task in singles. Critchley punctuated the binary scoring with a firm drive through midwicket for four off Ari Karvelas. Killeen also collected boundaries off the South African seamer, angling the ball wide of the slip cordon to third man and then turning through midwicket.

However, Karvelas gained his revenge when he ended Killeen’s 34-ball resistance with a delivery thar reared up and took the edge through to the wicketkeeper. The eighth wicket had put on 31 runs and used up 11 overs.

When Snater cut Coles for four, the target dropped below 100. He followed that with an audacious six off the spinner over cow corner as caution was scrapped in favour of aggression. Critchley caught the mood and swung Jack Carson for a maximum of his own, to be followed four balls later by another from Snater straight down the ground.

However, that forced an immediate switch that brought back Henry Crocombe and with his third ball he had Snater steering the ball high to second slip’s left. Critchley departed soon after,

The game had turned on a crazy 26-ball spell on the second evening when Essex lost seven wickets, tumbling from 171-3 to 177 all out, with Henry Crocombe claiming a second hat-trick in eight days. That meant Essex conceded a 98-run deficit on first-innings scores from which they never recovered.

With the all-rounder Coles hitting 79 in Sussex’s second innings, Essex were set a mammoth 329 to win in a notional 153 overs. It was always going to be a tall order.

In a tight division in which Essex and Sussex were separated by just one point at the start of the match, victory for the visitors carried them to the anonymity of mid-table; defeat for Essex left them concerned for their Division One status. Both have three games left to enhance their positions.

A feature of the four days was the number of replacements used, both for injuries and international call-ups. To recap, Essex lost seamer Charlie Bennett to a recurring shin splint problem on the first morning (replaced by Porter); Sam Cook to England (substituted by Killeen, recalled from a loan spell at Gloucestershire); and wicketkeeper Michael Pepper with a damaged thumb (replaced by emergency loan signing George Bell from Lancashire).

Sussex, meanwhile lost Australian opener Dan Hughes to a side strain (Oli Carter taking over as injury substitute) and all-rounder Tom Clark to a knee injury that meant he was unavailable to bowl in the fourth innings  They will also lose Crocombe and Coles to the England white-ball squad for most of the run-in.