Durham CCC: James Franklin names unchanged squad for County Championship match against Sussex

Durham head on the road for the second time during this summers campaign, following back to back home games against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.

The same 14 have been named from last week's squad against Nottinghamshire and Durham will now be looking for their first win of the campaign - Durham will go up against a youthful homegrown Sussex line-up who last season featured three school students and 10 university students.

Despite a young looking squad, Sussex do have two very experienced International professionals in Cheteshwar Pujara and Mohammad Rizwan who can influence a game between themselves.

Sussex currently sit in bottom spot in the Division 2 table with 16 points having lost two and drawn one of their opening 3 games, while Durham are 6th with 32 points.

Durham last faced Sussex in the 2019 season when Ben Raine bowled Durham to their second County Championship win of the season with a career-best haul of 6 for 27 as Sussex were beaten by 196 runs at Hove.

Squad v Sussex (28 April-1 May): David Bedingham, Scott Borthwick (c), George Drissell, Sean Dickson, Ned Eckersley +, Oliver Gibson, Michael Jones, Alex Lees, Liam Trevaskis, Keegan Petersen, Matthew Potts, Ben Raine, Chris Rushworth, Matt Salisbury

Franklin said: “We spoke after the game, where there was obviously disappointment in the group. I guess at the manner particularly of the defeat, but when you give a good team an opportunity they often take it and we gave it to them early on.

“It all really went wrong just before lunch when we lost Sean Dickson on what we thought was a really good batting pitch and then we capitulated to a score that was under par and then they took advantage of the way the pitch was playing.

“We reflected on it on Saturday after the game, we aren’t a bad team over night and we know that. It’s a new week and we have to take learnings from it ahead of the Sussex game.

“We’d made a solid start in the first two games and last year our red ball cricket was really good. We’re anticipating this will be just a blip, a bad one I know, probably the worst I’ve had since I’ve been here. We have the expectation on ourselves as a Championship team now and our expectation is we go down to Sussex and put ourselves in a good position there.

“Alex Lees is trying to prove his fitness. It’s been a frustrating start to the season for Alex especially after the amazing hundred he scored down in Cardiff. He’s eager to get going and watching all the runs people are scoring all around the country, but he’s a strong character and he’s got to respect and be patient with the process of getting fit.

“Michael Jones and Dickson have done a great job of creating selection pressures. Sean Dickson probably hasn’t played as much Championship cricket as he’d have wanted in the last couple of seasons but he’s really shown what he’s capable of doing at the start of this season.”