7-10 June, Home to Hampshire

I would like us to go down fighting and try ( by some way or other) to at least post a lead of 150. If we surrender early tomorrow with game over by lunch it really would be a surrender. Trouble is after Luke the batting could be rolled over rather rapidly.

Didn't see the Yardy lbw , by all accounts it was a shocker - can anyone confirm this ?

It doesn't look as if we did. The bowling that I thought would struggle to take 20 wickets had to rely on two run outs to take 10. The batting collapsed twice once more, and no matter how harsh Yardy's lbw decision may have been, these things are always in the wings. We only really get obsessive about them when they are part of a cycle of other, less outlandish and more incipient disasters. Good stand from Nash and Joyce, but then neither of them made it to the close and that was the first hesitant step towards rebuilding. Now that has gone and we can only call on the improbable.

There are three well-documented problems with the Sussex side this season: none of the batsmen can sustain two consecutive substantial innings; the pace bowlers have suffered a disastrous series of injuries; the side is unbalanced, lacking a true all-rounder and lacking a genuine, 20 overs in an innings, spinner. The first of these is very worrying, after several years of accepting that the axis of Nash-Joyce-Yardy, augmented at different times by players ranging from Prior to Cachopa would usually be good for something like 200-5, we have been lucky to get to 50-5 on a number of occasions. Secondly, no man can predict when injury will occur, but it is very unfortunate to seek to bolster a squad that already had Anyon sidelined with a long-term injury with Mills, a player whose county had given up on because of his undiagnosed spinal injury - and then to unveil our new star who promptly falls victim to a further ramification of a rare, or even unique spinal injury.

Then there is that lack of balance, increasingly important when so many frontline pace bowlers are unavailable. We cannot yet rely on Beer for a 4-day game, we are told, because he is taking a long time to mature, that he is bowling too slowly for championship cricket, that he will be murdered by First division bowlers. The same was true, or the same arguments were made, last year and we had to take in Tredwell on loan who did a job for us, not a very glamorous one, but one that helped give us breathing space and build up to a successful run in the last quarter of the season. The other candidate for the role was unfortunately a busted flush and we still seem him from time to time carrying water or taking part in practices, a little slimmer and much less charismatic than when he first appeared as the great unknown, the inspired signing who would bat top 6 and bowl classy spin.

So there we have it: bad luck with injuries, an array of stroke-playing batsmen who can't find their timing, an unbalanced squad that features second eleven players who aren't quite capable yet of frontline responsibilities, and sometimes aren't trusted with those responsibilities by the captain on the field. Forget about the relaid pitches because that applies to both teams and is very often a camouflage for other problems of fitness, skill or state of mind. Over the last couple of years we have seen the gradual decline of some batsmen, the departure of a genuine top-class spinner without a serious replacement, and a massive concentration on seam bowling potential without sometimes appreciating the risks to the balance of the squad that this entails. Faster bowlers are more subject to strains and tears, and their fitness training programme is often more gruelling than anything they meet on the field.

We aren't yet in crisis. The inevitable defeat to Hampshire won't put us into the bottom 3 and another win from the remaining 9 games would probably ensure survival whatever happens to Hants, Worcester and Somerset, even Notts. But we have no realistic chance of pressing Yorkshire or Middlesex for the championship this year and on paper, an array of stroke -makers from Nash down to Cachopa and Wright, plus an attack of Shahzad, Mills,Mafgoffin and Jordan/Hobden really ought to have promised that. This year is a 5th or 6th-place year, it seems, but what of next year, with players a little older, some injuries finally acknowledged to be just too bad, young players seemingly stuck at that eighteen year-old bottleneck where they choose another career, or don't quite measure up to the promise they showed, have a couple of first-team games then try somewhere else. Is that the year when we give up First Division status, and what is to happen after that? Will there be large amounts of money to get in the half-squad that will then be needed to get back up or will we just decline to the levels of a Kent or Glamorgan? A bad time to take that drop, too, with a new structure being developed, possibly one that will value elite sides and place the rest in a possibly wider fish-tank with lower standards of water oxygenation, making it much harder to get to the surface and be seen to be a sleek pre-eminent swimmer.

Perhaps it is time to look at the alternatives. Not an "off with their heads" for the majority of players, though there are several who are unlikely to improve on previous best performances and have a big task to return to the day-in, day-out standards that produced those results. Captaincy may be on the agenda as Joyce reaches 38 and Wright increase in experience and aptitude with his T20 role. Changes in captaincy may lead to changes in requirements for the strike force and the support force available. The lack of young players coming through the system who are mentally or physically equipped to challenge for a place should become a major concern for the Team Manager, who will need to do something about it. That something might depend on money being available, but it doesn't seem to have stopped us spend out on expensive luxuries in recent years, like the return of the under-achieving and socially disorganised Rory Hamilton-Brown, or the retention on full pay of the proprietor of the One Pro Cycling team whilst recuperating, amongst some other gambles.

Now it seems we're in denial. Earlier this evening my Twitter remark that this latest disappointment against Hampshire is like a house gradually sliding down an eroded cliff was greeted by Jon Filby (writing in a personal capacity of course) as "Utter garbage written by a faceless keyboard warrior. #putrid ".Well Jon, I'm not faceless, I introduced myself to you three or four matches ago and you promised to come and see me and have a chat. I'm still waiting and happy to debate the points I've raised, and to repeat earlier points I've made here, about the good and inspiring qualities of many members of the team, of the positive approach I think that Sussex have taken to redeveloping their pitches, and even to talk about the subject you seem to be surprisingly shy about, as Project Manager, the integration of the professional side with the countywide recreational and social cricket organisation. If you care to do that you might find that many members of the forum are interested in how Sussex could inject some new ideas into the debate about the future of the game, and could even help you with some of their own thoughts.

But the regeneration has to begin with the professional team during this season. There has to be a way to halt the cliff erosion, to brace up the house. Gradual return from injury of the missing fast bowlers is one part of it, but what I've outlined above suggests some longer-term issues of planning and priorities, and I'm sure that everyone who feels concerned about Sussex cricket will recognise that need. Ahead of us now are games against Durham at Arundel, Warwicks and Somerset away before we come back to Horsham. How are we going to ensure that we contest these games properly, from a position of strength?

Oh boy. Here we go. "Collective ownership".
I spoke to Jon yesterday. He was open and sincere.

What is this reference to "collective ownership" about, howardh?

Sorry, but I think I must be somewhere behind the 8 ball here. I really must try to keep up!

But we have no other option!

A simple catch dropped off Brown and Wright gets his 50 - is this the turning point and another 300+ Durham-type partnership from
the two. As Adrian Harms says, "This is backs against the wall cricket."

198-6 or 57 ahead.

May have been a repeat of Adams' dismissal in Hampshire's innings? I'm sure someone will tell us how it happened.