Trophies and titles are usually celebrated by bowlers wheeling a way after dismantling stumps, or by batters punching the air running between the wickets for the run that secures the final victory. On Sunday at Hove, the crowd stood to applaud umpire Paul Pollard’s right arm.
Shortly after Lunch on day four, Luke Hollman overstepped, giving Sussex their 250th run and securing the bonus point which sealed their place at the top of the Division Two table. Momentarily after Hollman had sent down a full toss, Pollard slightly raised his arm from his side as the crowd rose to their feet. Fittingly, it was Sussex captain, John Simpson, with over 1,000 runs and five centuries to his name across the season, who was on strike to receive that delivery.
After raising his fist in the air and embracing James Coles at the other end, he took another look around the ground, spun his bat in his hands and steadied himself to face the next delivery, as his teammates celebrated in the dressing room. The celebratory mood, and what Sussex have achieved this season is a far cry from the team Simpson took on at the end of 2023.
*****
Despite finishing one place off promotion last year, there was still an aura of instability around Hove. The side won just one game in 2022, and the memory of finishing bottom of three divisions in 2021 still loomed large. But more than the results, off-field disquiet continued to sour the club’s image and frustrate its members.
Players leaked through the cracks created by financial difficulties not unique to Sussex, but more acutely felt by them than many. Chris Jordan and Phil Salt left in 2021, followed by Ben Brown who still had two years left on his contract when he requested early release. Over the previous years, Danny Briggs, Michael Burgess, Reece Topley, Laurie Evans and Luke Wells had also all left the club.
With that experience bled out of the XI, Sussex overcame their inexperience in 2023 to finish third in Division Two, driven by the arrival of Paul Farbrace as head coach. Nevertheless, alongside the off-field rumblings, Sussex’s disciplinary record spoke to an absence of leadership and experience. An accumulation of penalties, culminating in a fractious final day against Leicestershire as the Foxes valiantly attempted to chase nearly 500, led to a points deduction as well as having Jack Carson and senior players Tom Haines and Cheteshwar Pujara banned for the penultimate game of the summer. It was a factor that effectively wrecked their chances of promotion.
The 2023 off-season saw further uproar over the departure of promising young opener Ali Orr, a home grown Sussex talent, along the South Coast to Hampshire. The departure of Orr was the final straw for former club captains Ian Gould and Chris Adams, both of whom left their backroom roles at the club in protest.
Into that environment stepped Simpson. With no previous captaincy experience and having spent his entire professional career at Middlesex, the move down to Hove was about more than spending the final few years of his career at the seaside.
“I didn’t just come down here to meander into retirement,” Simpson tells Wisden.com. “I wanted to get Sussex back into Division One… I spoke a lot in the changing room about being ruthless when you get in and you’re in form making the most of it, it’s quite nice now being able to back those words up.
“I’ve learned a lot. For 99 per cent of my career, my focus has only been on my own skills. This year, it’s been about trying to look after the other 10 guys on the pitch as well… I said at the start of the season that I wanted us to play some really good cricket and get bums on seats, but also to have a team that Sussex fans can resonate with and really enjoy watching.”
In the second match of Sussex’s season, Simpson scored a double-century, leading the side to post 694 against Leicestershire. In a statement of what they were capable of with the bat, Simpson was one of three centurions in that innings, alongside Tom Haines and Danny Lamb at No.8. There was also a 40-ball 55 from Ari Karvelas at No.10.
“The minimum I wanted was 900 runs this year,” says Simpson, who finished the season with 1,197. “Five hundreds was a little bit beyond what my expectations were. But the running joke is that I’ll show young boys that the old boy’s still got it.
“There are a few innings that stand out. I earmarked the two games in June to make sure I was really switched on because we hadn’t made the best start. Those two games were pivotal, and I stressed that it was really important that we made sure we were on it skillswise, and that our attitude was bang on. We went from three wins from seven to five wins through the back end which is pretty impressive. Those games were a huge turning point.”
The games in June cited by Simpson were won by 18 and 53 runs respectively. While Simpson’s runs were no double a huge part of Sussex’s season, adding a calm experienced head in the most crucial moments was what he was really brought in to do by Farbrace after where they fell short in 2023.
“We had to go away from just playing the youngsters and having a couple of senior players on board,” Farbrace said in an interview with The Telegraph over the weekend. “I felt we needed an experienced captain and an experienced leader… Last year people started to believe we were onto something, but we had to stop talking about being youngsters.”
“Farbs deserves a huge amount of credit,” says Simpson. “What he does is phenomenal. His expectation, his drive and determination to succeed in what he does is admirable. Sometimes we’ve disagreed but that’s been absolutely fine because we’re all paddling in the same direction. He doesn’t miss a thing and he has a bit of fun but he also knows when to toe the line and give us a bit of a bollocking. It’s hard to give him enough credit.”
*****
While Simpson’s runs and the success of the batting unit generally advanced Sussex’s cause, it was undoubtedly the ferocity of their fast-bowling attack that drove their campaign. Having featured sparsely over the last three years with injury and being bound to England’s camp, Ollie Robinson missed only two matches for the club over the 2024 Championship summer. As a player who’s historically struggled with a high workload, and whose work ethic has been criticised during his international career, having him readily available has been the defining difference for Sussex from 2023.
“His attitude and want to play for Sussex has been outstanding,” Simpson says of Robinson. “What he brings with the ball when he’s on song, there’s no better bowler in the country. He’s put spells together this year that have been quite incredible and not come away with any wickets, and other guys have reaped the rewards of that.
“Ollie’s got a great cricket brain, that’s one of the big takeaways for me from this year. He’s constantly communicating with me and I’m always picking his brain on field placings, what he thinks of bowling changes, spin or seam - he’s been brilliant for me. When I sat down with him at the start of the season I said to him that I wanted him to enjoy this season, but also that my aim was to get him back into that England squad, which hasn’t happened, but hopefully in the future will very soon. It’s a case of when not if that will happen.”
Robinson’s return at the start of the season was combined with a signing over a year in the making. Jayden Seales’s stock was fast rising in 2022, as the leader of the next generation of West Indies quicks. At the end of the year, he signed a contract to join Sussex for the first three months of the season, but was forced to cancel before arrival after a knee injury put him out of action for most of the rest of the year. Finally able to make the trip over, Seales played a key part in kick-starting Sussex’s promotion run.
He took 24 wickets in the six matches he played before joining up with the West Indies Test squad. That run with Sussex also set him up for Test success, and he was by far the West Indies’ best bowler during the England series.
“I was actually surprised they went with me again,” Seales told Wisden Cricket Monthly earlier in the summer. “Bowling with Ollie [Robinson] was a big thing. He’d build pressure at one end and I was the more attacking one going for the wickets. Not all the time, but it’s more in my nature to do that so it was a really good partnership.”
“We spoke to him on the phone once we got promoted,” says Simpson. “People forget, he’s only 22 years old and that’s what’s most exciting for us. We could have a really good relationship with Jayden for a really long time. That’s more of the job Farby’s done in getting the likes of Jayden, Nathan McAndrew and Danny Hughes coming in, as well as Jaydev Unadkat and with Puj [Cheteshwar Pujara] in there as well. That’s five very good overseas players.”
In amongst a Test-quality fast-bowling attack, Sussex’s leading wicket-taker this season was 23-year-old off-spinner Jack Carson. Carson’s career has already had its fair share of difficulties. As well as the penalty he received for attempting to trip a batter up at the end of 2023, he had knee surgery at the beginning of the 2022 summer, only appearing in three matches at the end of the season after a non-cricketing dispute with former head coach Ian Salisbury. That dispute resulted in Salisbury’s departure from the club.
This season, however, Carson has excelled. He took 50 wickets in Division Two of the Championship, the most of any spinner and third-most overall, and scored crucial lower-order runs - his new personal best was set falling three runs short of a century against Derbyshire. In Division One next year, Carson will be pitted against the other young spinners who have risen quickly to England honours in recent times.
“I’ve asked him to do some pretty tough roles,” says Simpson. “Especially bowling up the hill at Hove to a much shorter boundary. He’s never shied away from the challenges and every time I ask him to have a rest he looks daggers at me. He’s still very young, particularly in spinning terms, we know that spinners here don’t get into their prime until their late 20s or early 30s, but he’s been incredibly impressive. It’s a testament to why he’s one of the best spinners in the country, if not the best young spinner in the country.”
*****
As soon as the champagne settled on the Hove outfield on Sunday, the ground set to see Division One action for the first time since 2015 next season, thoughts were already turning to what could be expected from next year.
“I’ve played a lot of Division One cricket and I know how hard it can be,” says Simpson. “But these players are going to be a year older and a year wiser, and with the group we have it will be a great opportunity to show those teams just how good a team we are. It’s not just a case of staying up, it’s about trying to go punch for punch with them. It sounds crazy to be going punch for punch with Surrey but that’s what we have to do.”
Despite that bravado, staying up will be a tough ask. Budgets are tighter at Hove than almost every other top tier county, and Sussex will have to ask that young group of players to exceed everything they’ve done so far. However, what will go a long way to extending their stay in Division One will be sustaining the new-found positivity around the club.
The hope is that winning the Division Two trophy is indicative of wider change than a one-off run of success, with the club finally drawing a line under an uncomfortable era. The true judge of that line’s solidity will begin in April.
Follow Wisden for all cricket updates, including live scores, match stats, quizzes and more. Stay up to date with the latest cricket news, player updates, team standings, match highlights, video analysis and live match odds.
