County Championship: Rain ruins Sussex’s hopes again – Simpson’s double ton is in vain

Frequent heavy showers killed off any prospect of a positive result from Sussex’s visit to Leicestershire in the Vitality County Championship, with no play possible at all on the final scheduled day of their Division Two clash.

Skipper John Simpson’s maiden double century had put Sussex in a strong position on day three, which ended with Leicestershire 270 in arrears at 86 for one in their second innings after Sussex had declared at 694 for nine just after tea, a lead of 356 on first innings.

But after a saturated outfield delayed the start on day four, the combination of more showers and the safety issues raised by trying to remove the covering sheets in winds gusting to gale force gave umpires James Middlebrook and Paul Pollard little option but to abandon the match as a draw shortly before 1pm.

It means both sides have two draws from two matches so far, with Sussex the more frustrated, having seen a winning position come to nothing against Northamptonshire at Hove last week, with weather again having the last word.

Sussex take 14 points from this match, giving them 29 from two, with Leicestershire taking 12 to swell their early-season total to 25.

Head coach Paul Farbrace said: “It’s disappointing but looking at it another way we’ve had three days of good cricket. The groundstaff did brilliantly to get us on considering the outfield is very soft and they’ve had a lot of rain here like everywhere else.“It was a very good pitch and it was a shame for both sides that it couldn't be finished in the way both sides would have wanted, but I guess that’s cricket in April.“We can take a lot of positives from the game. We played good cricket last week and couldn’t quite get over the line, and here we’ve bowled the opposition out for 330 and then batted ourselves into a position where there was only one side going to win the game. In both the first two games we’ve been in with a good chance of winning going into the last day, which is what we’ve talked about doing.“Individually, we’ve had Haines continuing his good start to the season, Simpson getting a double hundred and Lamb a hundred was outstanding for the pair of them after wanting to show their new teammates what they are capable of. And Hudson-Prentice was outstanding again as he was against Northants last week.”

Sussex host Gloucestershire next – at Hove, from Friday.