After a prolonged period of YB40 fixtures crowned by an excellent victory over the Netherlands at the weekend, Director of Cricket Mick Newell is happy with the Nottinghamshire side going into this week’s LV=CC match against Sussex.

“I think that we put in a complete performance against the Netherlands on Sunday, they are side who won five matches in the competition last year and can trip you up sometimes,” said Newell.

“I think we’ll be fine, especially after the win against Surrey, that was a big match for us.”

“If we’d lost that game we would have been a little bit down and would have needed a pick up, a boost, but for people like Fletcher who haven’t played in the one day games so far, they give us all a boost.”

For Newell, the problem has been not in the motivation, but the sky, with rain interrupting a number of scheduled training sessions ahead of the fixture on Friday.

“The problem that we have had this week has been the weather,” said Newell.

“We wanted to do a long practice yesterday but couldn’t because of the rain, and we were interrupted this morning too and if that wasn’t enough the forecast for tomorrow isn’t good either.”

With rain deciding the programme of preparation in Nottingham, the visit to the top of the table side at Hove will be quite the contest for Notts, who are also in a rich vein of form.

“It should be a decent game, at a ground where we won last year, after a few seasons without a great record there,” said Newell.

“From our perspective we know they’re playing well, they had a great win over Somerset last week but we’ve won six matches in a row, including a win in the LV=County Championship.”

“We’re confident and ready for the challenge that we know they’ll possess.”

Sussex’s win over Somerset last week did not even reach the two-day mark, with bowler Steve Magoffin finishing the match with 12-31, but Newell is well aware of the challenge facing his side.

“There aren’t many ‘danger players’ that we’ve identified,” he said.


Chris Nash

“Chris Nash has a good record against us, he tends to score a few runs and Magoffin bowled very well last week

Newell added: “they’re a good all-round side who did well last year so we know they’re a good side and it’ll make for quite the match.”  

Nottinghamshire squad to face Sussex (from): Alex Hales, Ed Cowan, Michael Lumb, James Taylor, Samit Patel, Steven Mullaney, Chris Read, Paul Franks, Ajmal Shahzad, Graeme White, Harry Gurney, Luke Fletcher

Match information

The first day's play has been rescheduled to start at midday, with play continuing until 7pm

Coverage

BBC Radio Nottingham will be providing ball-by-ball on-line commentary, via the BBC Sport website.