Lutters Lines (September 17)

IT’S that time of year when people are either popping the champagne corks or crying into their beer in cricketing bars all across the country.

Fortunately for the local area there’s not too much of the latter, and plenty of the former.

Sussex secured the Division 2 County Championship title after stuffing a poor Northants side and Glamorgan’s failure to beat Surrey.

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Sussex have easily been the best side in the division, and should never have really got relegated last year but for an appalling season where they let themselves down.

League tables don’t lie after all so, hopefully, the county will learn from their mistakes and a summer of recruitment (hopefully of match-winning bowlers) lies ahead.

There are rumours that a “big name” bowler is on the verge of signing for the county, but who that could be is anyone’s guess. We don’t even know if “big name” means that he’s got loads of letters in his surname, but the economic downturn has meant that there are many more players available having been released from other counties, as the money men in charge look to balance books.

County squads are getting smaller and sides are relying on youngsters to fill up a squad, mainly because they are cheap as well as potentially good.

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If a county wants to bring in an established player from another county it won’t come cheap.

What is encouraging though is that clubs are tending to give contracts their home-grown youngsters rather than splash out on Kolpaks, which can only be good for the future of the English game.

If it’s a “big name” bowler Sussex are talking about, Ryan Sidebottom has just been released from Notts. You never know, but his wages may be demanding to say the least, as he has been on a recent central contract. I’ll be watching the Sussex space anyway.

Another side celebrating promotion are Goring, who will be playing in Division 2 of the Sussex County League next season. What a turnaround for the club who were rooted to the bottom of Division 3 West just over a year ago.

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They have obviously got a good thing going there at the moment and I’ve no doubt will be relishing the opportunity to have a go at playing against local rivals Worthing.

They may also, like Sussex, want to think about recruitment, as both the teams who were promoted from Division 3 of SCL in 2009 were relegated in 2010.

Having not seen the side play, it’s difficult for me to say how they will get on, and a lot of it boils down to luck at the start of the season. You tend to find that once you get on a roll, results start going your way.

The opposite happened to us at Worthing. Having played well to give ourselves a shot at promotion we really let ourselves down in the final four games of the season and got on the wrong sort of roll.

Never mind, there’s always next year – assuming I get selected by the new captain of course. Stats don’t lie, Skip.