On Sussex's woeful T20 form this season

Luke Wright

Last year, Sussex Sharks reached T20 finals day and although they were knocked out in the semi-finals by Yorkshire it was still a fantastic T20 campaign. However, so far this year, it isn’t going so great and reaching finals day looks next to impossible.

After four games, Sussex find themselves fifth in the South Group, ahead of Kent who have lost of all their matches. Sussex have lost three out of their four games and to reach the quarter-finals and have a hope of progressing to the finals day, they will need to win pretty much all of their remaining games and this is a big ask.

But what has gone wrong?

Sussex have a strong squad and on paper their batting line up is incredibly strong. Openers Chris Nash and Luke Wright are both very capable.

Luke Wright has been a T20 globetrotter over the last few years having played for Sussex, England, Melbourne Stars and Pune Warriors amongst stints for smaller teams.

Wright has scored 115 runs in his four innings which sounds great but despite his match winning 81 against Middlesex he has underperformed, scoring 11, 6 and 17 in his other innings.

Nash has scored 85 runs from his four innings and in two of innings he seemed to be playing well and he got in but then lost concentration and got out. In the other two innings he got out cheaply, especially against Surrey at the Oval where he scored just 5.

The rest of the batting line up also looks very good with players like Dwayne Smith, Scott Styris and Rory Hamilton-Brown. However, none of them have really stood out. There have been a few good innings but overall it has been quite disappointing. The return of Dwayne Smith hasn’t quite lived up to expectations as he is yet to achieve a really big score.

The bowlers have done pretty well, the spinners have come in very handy. However, at times they have all been too expensive which has proved costly.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Sussex and I hope they can turn this around but their performances just haven’t been up to standards and I don’t think it will be our year in the T20 tournament.

It was incredibly frustrating when against Hampshire, the opposition needed 12 from the last over and I thought yes we’ve got this. But there was a lack of concentration and the Sussex lads gave away four overalls which cost them the game.

I hope very much so that Sussex do come back strong and get through the group stages but we seem to have lost that magic touch from 2009. Also it probably doesn’t help when the teams around us have improved dramatically.