Debutant Jayden Seales gave Sussex the initiative on a shortened first day in their County Championship opener against Northamptonshire at Hove.
After losing the toss and a four-hour delay before play started at 3pm, the visitors amassed 92 runs for the loss of two wickets from the 38.1 overs possible before bad light stopped play.
Charging in from the sea end, Seales dismissed Emilio Gay for five with just his seventh Sussex delivery. Gay glanced the ball down the leg-side and captain John Simpson pounced, almost at full stretch.
He then trapped Justin Broad lbw with a full-length delivery. In a pacy first appearance, Seales, who has 10 test caps for the West Indies, finished the day with two for 33 from his 10.1 overs.
Despite bowling nicely, his fellow bowlers were a little less penetrative. England’s Ollie Robinson failed to take a wicket despite bowling a consistent line throughout his nine overs, conceding just 14 runs in the process.
All-rounders Fynn Hudson-Prentice and Danny Lamb also bowled tidily, the latter beating the bat on several occasions.
The other Sussex bowlers barely featured, Tom Haines and Jack Carson sharing just three overs between them.
At the close of play, all-rounder Luke Procter remained unbeaten alongside Indian international Karun Nair. Timing his blows to perfection, Procter amassed 41 runs from 110 balls, racking up four boundaries in his two and a half hours at the crease.
The visiting captain will have been particularly pleased with the gargantuan six that he smoked in the eighth over. Taking the attack to Sussex, the left-hander sent a short Seales delivery sailing into the leg-side pavilion’s upper deck.
Alongside him, Nair has offered the odd glimpse of the classy top order batter who crafted 303* against England in 2016. Dotting out his first 20 balls, Nair struck his first boundary in the 35th over, unleashing a straight drive off the bowling of Seales. He’ll resume on 12 (35) tomorrow morning.
Before falling, Broad too had set his stall out for a long vigil, labouring through 76 balls for his 27 runs.
Reflecting on the day’s play, Jayden Seales said: “I’m always happy being able to pick up wickets for the team, especially playing for my first time in these conditions. It was very good for me and the team as well.
“I was very happy to get that first one off my back and the second one was just me trying to get some rhythm and trying to get the ball to do a little bit. Eventually it got the wicket.
“For me, coming up the hill was probably a lot easier. I had to stay a little stronger. It made me have more control over what I wanted to do so it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be.
“Being a fast bowler coming into a new team, your role is to pick up wickets and provide for the team. Being able to do that allowed me to settle down and just get into my work a lot faster.”
On his partnership with Ollie Robinson, Seales said: “He came in and built pressure right from that first spell. Even after tea, he helped me to just hit one spot as much as I could and build pressure.”
Play resumes at 11am tomorrow (Saturday 6 April) at the 1st Central County Ground in Hove.
