Wiese and Salt lead the charge for cup progress
Sussex made a stunning start to their Royal London One Day Cup campaign by beating two of the fancied sides in the south group.
First David Wiese led the Sharks to a thrilling victory over Surrey by two wickets in front of a bumper bank holiday crowd at the County Ground on Good Friday.
Then Phil Salt led the charge as they beat last year’s finalists Kent Spitfires at Beckenham, reaching their 299 target with almost ten overs to spare.
Against Surrey, who are a side full of international white-ball talent, Wiese appeared to be running out of partners when Sussex, chasing 275, slumped to 232-7 and 255-8 after opener Luke Wright’s 69. But Wiese stood firm to strike an unbeaten 92 from 81 balls, with 14 fours, to see Sussex home with 11 balls to spare.
It was his highest score for Sussex in 50-over cricket.
Earlier Mia Hamza became the first Sussex player to take four wickets on their one-day debut for the club.
Sharks skipper Ben Brown said: “It was good to see a big crowd and the sun out. It was a good day to watch cricket. The pitch was a bit sloppy and slow. I thought we fielded brilliantly.
“It was an extraordinary innings by David Wiese. It was one of the best one-day knocks we’ve had for a while.
“Phil Salt got of us to a flyer against the new ball and Luke Wright batted really well. But the day belonged to David.”
At Beckenham on Sunday, Salt’s maiden List A hundred powered unbeaten Sussex to a seven-wicket victory and inflicted a third straight One Day Cup defeat on Kent.
Spitfires under-achieved with the bat on a decent pitch at the New County Ground and were blown away by the Sussex batting as Salt’s unbeaten 137 eased Sharks to victory, with Harry Finch and George Garton contributing.
Salt said: “When ‘Finchy’ came in he played superbly by taking all the pressure off me and I’m really pleased we went on to get the third-wicket partnership against Kent – it was great to do that with such a good mate.
“I was dropped on 23 and when you get a chance like that you think ‘come on, take advantage’, and I’m delighted to have done that.
“When we came here we knew it would be a pretty good surface but our bowlers did really well to restrict them to around 300.
“When Garts came on to bowl for us I felt the game was starting to drift a little bit, but he bowled four really tight overs, god two for 20odd and that swung the whole momentum of the game our way. From that point we knew we’d not be having to chase such a big total.”