Sussex announce team for eagerly anticipated Australia match

Team news ahead of Australia clash

Sussex CCC today announced their team ahead of tomorrow’s eagerly anticipated match against Australia, which runs through until Saturday at The County Ground, Hove.

Over 20,000 tickets have already been sold for the four days and it promises to be one of the most well attended matches at Hove in the county’s history.

This is the first match of Australia’s 2009 Ashes tour and the national side have been training this week in the sunshine at Hove. They will be looking hard at their squad ahead of the first test match, which takes place at Cardiff between the 8th and 12th of July.

The forecast is excellent and although Friday is sold out, there are still tickets available for the Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Tickets can be purchased via the website (www.sussexcricket.co.uk), on the gate or by calling 0844 2640202.

Mark Robinson, Professional Cricket Manager, said: “It’s an honour to play against any international side and especially one as revered as Australia. It’s a great opportunity for this Sussex team to play and put a marker down for the Club and themselves for the future.”

Ricky Ponting, Australia captain, said: “We believe that the conditions here are more like the Cardiff wicket than anywhere else in the country so it will be good to get used to the pace and the bounce. It will be a good opportunity for our bowlers to get used to English conditions and get used to the lines and lengths they have to bowl. We are playing 12 players in this game, but that doesn’t mean we will just be using it as practise. We will play the game to win, there’s no doubt about that. It will be four days of good quality cricket which I hope the fans enjoy watching as well.”

The Sussex squad is as follows; WAT Beer, RJ Hamilton-Brown, AJ Hodd, CD Hopkinson, EC Joyce, RJ Kirtley, RSC Martin-Jenkins, CD Nash, OP Rayner, PSE Sandri, LJ Wright and MH Yardy (c).