Ian Salisbury plays the waiting game at Sussex as he ignores Alan Hansen adage

HUW TURBERVILL: Against the backdrop of some less than ideal results is a young, homegrown base means the future is more than just bright down at Hove

Ollie Robinson cleared for return after receiving ban and fine for offensive tweets

Eastbourne is a splendid English seaside town, but it’s not exactly known as a place where the kids hang, is it? And now we’re at it, it’s better known for tennis. Yet for Sussex County Cricket Club it’s proving to be a fruitful nursery.

An audit of their squad reveals that five players were born there, including two batsmen who are playing in the match against Glamorgan at Hove this week – Ali Orr, who is 19, and Oli Carter (20). Then there are seamers Henry Crocombe and Joe Sarro (both also 19) and 16-year-old Archie Lenham, who has been tearing up the Vitality Blast, taking wickets with his leg-spin and pouching that wonder catch against Surrey at the Kia Oval. It’s that bracing sea air, perhaps.

Before we run through a list of the other wunderkinds in Ian Salisbury’s squad, a confession. As an avid Sussex follower, I must admit to a slight frustration at this summer’s performances in the LV=Insurance County Championship that have promised much but ultimately ended in defeat.

They fought well against Lancashire and Yorkshire at home, on top after the first innings, only to be defeated. They were also drubbed by Northamptonshire (twice) and Yorkshire away; drew with Lancashire away and Kent at home, and beat only Glamorgan away.

It’s a tricky one for fans. It’s exciting to see so many promising youngsters emerge. Yet they want their team to win. 

It’s also worth asking how many defeats it takes for youngsters’ confidence to be damaged.

^{Sussex hope they will soon have a team to match their surroundings}

The normally astute Alan Hansen’s adage that you can’t win anything with kids on Match of the Day in 1995 was famously disproved by the ‘Class of 92’ at Manchester United that season. But it would appear that it will take a few years for this Sussex side to mature and return to the top flight of the four-day game for the first time since 2015 (if two divisions return, of course).

Salisbury, who became County Championship and one-day head coach in the winter after the departure of Jason Gillespie, confirms that the emphasis on youth is deliberate, but he says: “I don’t want to wait three years for the benefits! I might not be here then! We are trying to win every game.”

To be fair some of his investment in youth has been out of necessity. Covid hit the county hard financially last summer as it did every club, and the full-time first-team squad has been reduced to 18. And now the virus has struck Tom Clark (aged just 20, born in Haywards Heath), and forced seven players he has been in contact with to self-isolate for the visit of Glamorgan. They are: Jamie Atkins (19, Redhill), James Coles (17, Aylesbury), Crocombe, Tom Haines (22, Crawley), Sean Hunt (19, Guildford), Delray Rawlins and Ollie Robinson. 

There are other youngsters in the side, though, including the hugely exciting Danial Ibrahim, who has scored two half-centuries in his first three Championship innings at the age of 16; Northern Irish offie Jack Carson (20) and Birmingham-born batsman Aaron Thomason (24). 

It's also worth pointing out that Crocombe, Ibrahim, Lenham, Orr, Rawlins and Sarro all went to Bede's School (as did Derbyshire's Finn Hudson-Prentice and Lancashire's Luke Wells) – all coached by ex-Sussex stalwarts Alan Wells and Neil Lenham.

Tom Haines' coming of age

Also unavailable here was George Garton (24) who disappointingly was left on the sidelines by Eoin Morgan for England’s white-ball wins against the woeful Sri Lankans.

There are still plenty of experienced players around – Stiaan van Zyl, Travis Head, Ben Brown, Will Beer, Stuart Meaker and Mitch Clayton make up the rest of the XI against the Welsh county.

Robinson and Phil Salt (rested for this game but now called up by England in their emergency to face Pakistan) are in their primes; veteran Chris Jordan has been on England duty, and David Wiese, Luke Wright and Ravi Bopara are experienced T20 performers.

I make it 10 out of 29 of the squad are from Sussex, which is not bad considering so many counties have been accused in recent years of relying on Kolpaks.

“It was generally our strategy to encourage youth – we want to see young home-grown players from the Sussex area in action,” Salisbury told The Cricketer.

^{Tom Haines has been Sussex's outstanding performer of 2021}

“Some of them probably are ahead of the curve. You’d say maybe that the 16-year-olds will hit their peak at 21, the 21-year-olds at 25. Injuries and Covid have sped up their development. Ideally, we would have drip-fed them in.

"The beauty of them is that they are all-format cricketers. We want them to be adaptable: partly out of necessity because of the squad size, but also for their own sakes, as they will not want to be pigeon-holed. Jack Carson has been holding up the attack: he’s been superb, and Haines is the fifth-highest run-scorer in the Championship.”

Salisbury confesses to a slight disappointment that the senior players have been out of form or injured, and therefore not able to haul the rookies with them.

“The youngsters helped us hang in there for two or three days against Yorkshire and Lancashire – it’s then that you want the senior players to help them over the line in for the third and fourth days, but it wasn’t to be. Stuart Meaker has taken eight wickets in six matches so far, and Mitch Claydon has been injured.” 

Van Zyl has averaged only 24.82, and Head a bewildering low 13.55 for somebody of his talents.

If there is any discontent among the Hove faithful I didn’t detect it among in the pavilion, however. They just seem happy to be out in the fresh air, at last, watching their beloved side after their interminable exile during the pandemic.