Two Sussex players in MCC side for Champion County Match

Two of Sussex’s exciting crop of young players have been selected to play in next month’s Champion County Match, the traditional curtain-raiser to the English county season.

George Garton and Delray Rawlins will play for MCC against County Champions, Essex in a four-day first-class match Barbados.

The match will take place under floodlights between Tuesday 27th and Friday 30th March at the Kensington Oval in the Barbadian capital, Bridgetown.

The game follows on from the ECB North-South series, also in Barbados. Garton and Rawlins have both been selected in the 13-man South squad.

Twenty-year-old Garton flew to the Caribbean yesterday as part of the England Lions squad. Earlier this winter, the left-arm quick was called into the Ashes squad as cover ahead of the first test match before forming part of the Lions training camp in Australia.

All-rounder Rawlins – also 20 – has spent the winter playing grade cricket in Sydney as part of the ECB’s overseas placement programme. He was man of the match in the final of the New South Wales state T20 competition at the end of last year and scored his first century for Sydney CC in January.

The full MCC XI for the Champion County Match is as follows:

Daniel Bell-Drummond (c) (Kent)

Paul Collingwood (Durham)

Brett D’Oliveira (Worcestershire)

Sam Northeast (Kent)

Sam Hain (Warwickshire)

Delray Rawlins (Sussex)

John Simpson (Middlesex)

Dom Bess (Somerset)

Matt Fisher (Yorkshire)

George Garton (Sussex)

Fidel Edwards (Hampshire)

Looking ahead to the fixture, MCC Head of Cricket, John Stephenson said: “This is a young, talented and exciting team which we’re very much looking forward to seeing take on Essex, and giving them exposure to the longer format of day/night cricket.

“This group boasts plenty of experience, not in only county cricket but also with several of the England sides. We are lucky to have Paul Collingwood and Fidel Edwards with us who are vastly experienced players at both international and domestic level. I’m looking forward to seeing them both in action as well as passing on some of their knowledge to the younger players in the side.

“MCC is delighted to be hosting the Champion County match in Barbados, continuing our collaboration with the ECB. We hope that this match will provide a platform for the iconic Kensington Oval to go on to host a day/night Test Match in the near future.”