The Championship match at Headingley was the last before the Metro Bank One-Day Cup takes over in August.
As it stands, Sussex will only have one overseas player in the 50 overs competition, with Nathan McAndrew and Henry Shipley ending their stints after the game against Yorkshire.
Cheteshwar Pujara will be back and after leading Sussex to a surprise semi-final place last year he will fancy his chances of a repeat, especially as he has a few more selection options than 12 months ago.
A decision on who fills the two overseas slots for the climax of the Championship campaign in September will be made in the next few weeks.
Farbrace felt two overseas bowlers gave Sussex their best chance of winning four-day matches which is why Shipley was recruited when Pujara left to play for India in June.
The surfeit of draws (Sussex have won one and drawn seven so far) may suggest that the plan has failed but no one could accuse either McAndrew or Shipley of not doing their bit.
A bigger issue has been bland pitches and the Kookaburra ball used for two games which did little to assist seam or swing.
Farbrace is not a fan and neither, you suspect, are his bowlers. Don’t be surprised if the ECB quietly shelves any plans to use Kookaburras in four-day cricket in the future.
Pujara’s involvement in the final four Championship games has yet to be confirmed but it would be a shame if the Indian, who captained Sussex impressively in the first few months of the season, wasn’t back for the denouement.
Another thing Farbrace may have to bear in mind is the potential availability of Steven Finn and Ollie Robinson in September.
Sussex supporters have heard plenty from Steven Finn this summer but seen a lot less of him. He has been a regular and knowledgeable voice on BBC Test Match Special’s coverage of the Ashes while he recovers from knee surgery but hasn’t played a game for Sussex for nearly a year.
But Farbrace confirmed last week that he expects Finn to be available for the One-Day Cup and, if all goes well, he might be in the frame for a couple of those Championship games too.
By the end of next week Robinson’s involvement in the Ashes will be over when the series concludes at the Oval.
You’d have thought someone like Ollie, who enjoys staying in the groove by bowling regularly, would fancy a couple of outings for Sussex in September, although, as Farbrace confirmed last week, the ECB will have the final word on that.
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The Vitality Blast finals day took place at Edgbaston a week and a half ago and it said a lot about that competitiveness of the south group that it provided all four finalists. Unfortunately, Sussex Sharks weren’t among them and, despite some better performances in the second half of the group stages, they were always playing catch-up after only winning one of their first six games.
If you had said to coach Paul Farbrace prior to the tournament that his team would win five away from home, he’d have expected them to progress to the knockout stages.
The issue was Sussex’s performances at Hove, where they won just one of their seven matches.
It’s hard to figure out just why that was. It surely can’t have been the atmosphere. There was only one full house, for the game against Surrey, but the Hove crowd generally got behind their team. And conditions, of course, are the same for both teams.
Six wins was two more than 2022 so that’s an improvement but Sussex remain a work in progress in T20.
One of the last links with the successful teams at the end of the last decade has now been broken after it was announced that Ravi Bopara’s contract would not be renewed.
Ironically, with 408 runs including a century and three fifties, Bopara had his most productive season since joining Sussex in 2019 and felt he deserved a new deal, describing the decision as “very disappointing”.
Who replaces him as captain will be interesting. Tymal Mills, with all his experience in the format, would be a contender but Mills’s body won’t hold up if he’s asked to play every game. An overseas skipper is another option for 2024.
The fact that Sussex used 19 players during the competition and gave opportunities to players like Tom Clark and Tom Haines previously denied them in T20 suggests they trying to work out what their best side is.
The arrival of all-rounder Danny Lamb from Lancashire next season will help balance the team and, while Sussex did surprise Surrey at the Kia Oval this year, powerhouses like Surrey, winners Somerset and Hampshire are starting to dominate the south group and 2024 could again develop into a scramble for fourth place among the other six counties, Sussex included.
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Sussex got a lot of stick from their supporters for recruiting ageing seamers such as Mitch Claydon and Stuart Meaker a few years ago and getting little return on their investment.
So, the decision to bring in 36-year-old Chris Wright from Leicestershire on a two-year contract raised some eyebrows, although it doesn’t appear to be a gamble at all.
His stats are impressive: he has taken more than 500 wickets in approaching 200 first-class games.
But more importantly that wiry frame has stood up to the rigours of county cricket pretty well and he has an enviable fitness record. There are no guarantees, of course, but Wright might turn out to be a good piece of recruitment.
Follow Bruce Talbot on Twitter @brucetalbot1.
Pujara must come back for the remaining CC games, the batting looks brittle without him to steady the ship. And please splash out on a overseas fast bowler of proven quality – MacAndrew tried hard but is just a journeyman who isn’t worth a valuable overseas place. Let’s be honest though, if Sussex got promoted they’d get thumped every game next season and would be straight back to division 2, these promising lads need a fair bit more experience before they are ready for division 1.