Underdogs Sussex hit Finals Day with ambition as renaissance season reaches climax

A theme of regeneration and renewal is gripping English white-ball cricket at present, even if – on the early evidence of their T20I series with Australia – England’s rebooted team remains a work in progress. Down on the south coast, however, where one of the stories of the summer has been unfolding, Sussex have already shown how quickly teams can flourish when the right culture is put in place.

Barely 18 months ago, Sussex were perceived as a club in crisis. Whether it was a conveyor-belt of departures at player, coach and executive level alike, or a grim first-class haul of three wins (and 19 defeats) in as many seasons, there was little cause for cheer among the deckchair-dwellers of Hove.

Now, however, the mood has been transformed. Sussex are riding high at the top of the County Championship’s second tier, with promotion firmly in their own hands, and the confidence that has given to a young, pared-back squad has rubbed off on their T20 Blast campaign too. A solid second-place finish in the South Group, and a rousing quarter-final win over Lancashire, propelled them to Finals Day for the first time in three seasons. And now, as Paul Farbrace, the club’s head coach put it, Sussex aren’t just off for “a nice weekend in Birmingham”.

“Yes, we’re delighted to be here, but we haven’t come to make the numbers up,” Farbrace said. “It’s very English to talk about, ‘oh, it’d be nice to do okay’ … we’re here to win the tournament, and we’ve got to win two more games to do that. If we don’t, and somebody beats us, well, good luck to them. They’ll have deserved to have won it. But we’re definitely here to win.”

The current mood around the club is, quite literally, infectious. “We started well in the Championship, so that had a knock-on effect into the T20 side,” Farbrace said. “And then, when we went back from T20, we won the two Championship games in the middle. So the belief is there among the players, and there’s an expectation to win.”

It’s a common theme among this year’s Finals Day attendees. With the exception of Gloucestershire, whose surge into the last four came at just the right time, the three other teams still in contention have enjoyed stellar seasons across formats. Surrey are still on course for a third consecutive County Championship title, despite Thursday’s thrilling loss to their closest rivals Somerset, who are themselves eyeing a rare treble, with the Metro Bank final against Glamorgan to come next week.

“Sometimes you can say, well, we haven’t quite got the squad, so we can only compete in one format. No, you can compete in both,” Farbrace said. “And the expectation isn’t just about our first-team performances. The commercial team, the people in the office, the groundstaff … everybody is excited by the progress the team’s making. It makes their jobs a damn sight easier because they’re not getting stick from people that they might have done two years ago.”

“Once I’d put myself forward for the captaincy, it wasn’t with the aim to solidify, it was to win. And a lot of our players have surprised themselves with how good they could be in T20 cricket”

Tymal Mills

Sussex’s turnaround in fortunes isn’t just down to luck, however. From the moment of Farbrace’s arrival in February 2023, the club focused on red-ball cricket as a means to shore up their basic discipline, but, after a season of steady improvement under Ravi Bopara, the appointment of Tymal Mills as T20 captain has gone on to turbo-charge their ambitions in the Blast.

“There’s been a lot more role clarity, there’s been a lot more clear thinking, and clear planning,” Farbrace added. “We’ve got the right people in the right places, which is no disrespect to Ravi, because he scored an awful lot of runs and took a lot of wickets. But the addition of Dan Hughes [as overseas player] has been absolutely outstanding, and the non-selection of Ollie Robinson for England has helped us enormously.

“But Millsy’s done a fantastic job on and off the field as captain. I think every game we’ve gone into, we’ve been exceptionally well prepared because of the work he did in the winter with Luke Dunning, our analyst, and James [Kirtley, T20 coach] … what needed to improve, the collation of all the stats, and talking to every player about what their game looked like, and where they needed to get to.”

Mills, now 32, knows of what he speaks. In 2018, he played under Luke Wright as a key member of the last Sussex side to reach the Blast final, and though they lost on that occasion to Worcestershire, that team is still recalled as one of the greatest in the format’s history – featuring luminaries such as Jofra Archer, Chris Jordan and Rashid Khan, not to mention a young Phil Salt, England’s current (stand-in) T20I captain.

“That team we had five or six years ago was an awesome team, and we turned up to every game expecting to win, because of the players we had on paper,” Mills said. “But it dissipated quite quickly, and it probably wasn’t a viable way of running a club the size of Sussex, with probably six or seven players only playing T20 cricket.”

But now, as a rare single-format squad member, he will arrive at Hove, as Farbrace puts it, “chomping at the bit” to get stuck into the competition, and making sure everyone is ready to raise their game.

“The club rightly had to shift focus towards Championship cricket, but once I’d put myself forward for the captaincy, it wasn’t with the aim to solidify, it was to win,” Mills added. “And a lot of our players have surprised themselves with how good they could be in T20 cricket.

“It is a game that you can’t just turn up and play, and hope to do well. Maybe 15 years ago, you could see how you go and have a laugh. But T20 is proper business now, and if you want to be good at it and you want to be successful at it, you’ve got to put in time, and you’ve got to put in effort, and you’ve got to think about it.

“So that’s something that I think we’ve changed now at the club, especially with our batters, who have started to scratch the surface of what they can do in T20 cricket. The club’s in a good place, because the boys have started really well in the four-day stuff, so we had a lot of players scoring runs, taking wickets, winning games. That puts you in a good place, and you haven’t got half your squad who are out of form and nicking off, and not confident or comfortable with their technique.”

One disappointment for Sussex is that they will be denied the chance to deploy one of the modern greats of T20 cricket during Finals Day, with Archer tied up on international duty. It’s a situation that Mills decried as “stupid” in the wake of their quarter-final win, but as Kirtley acknowledged, his absence isn’t exactly a novelty for the club.

“Jofra is a world-class act and, realistically, he can’t be replaced,” he said. “But for 14 games, we played without him and qualified. So, it’s actually far easier to plan not to have him, and when he does play, it’s a bonus.

“We also lost Danny Lamb, who was doing the workload up the hill at Hove… no one can replace those shoes. But, we’ve played some really good cricket, and different individuals putting their hand up at various times, and I expect them to do the same tomorrow.”

Kirtley singled out Hughes for particular praise, not simply for his competition-leading haul of 595 runs at 42.50, but also for his calmness off the field and the manner in which he has helped to nurture other key performers such as Harrison Ward, his opening partner. And similarly, with Mills and Robinson providing the wise heads in the bowling attack, the team’s belief comes with some justifiably solid foundations.

“You want to come to Finals Day, and the younger players will want to have a bit more of this,” he said. “Some of them have only just turned 20. This is what it’s about. These experiences of big days out can only bode well for Sussex in the future.”