The Sussex story

Worth the wait: Sussex captain Chris Adams lifts the Championship trophy © Getty Images

Holding on to a Division One place; improving on a poor 2002 record in the National League; perhaps getting to Lord's and winning a one-day final. These were the limits of the hopes of most Sussex supporters this year. The Championship? Sussex had not won it with Fry, Relf and Ranji; nor Sheppard, Suttle and Thomson; nor Dexter, Snow and Parks; so why now?

Inside the dressing-room the ambitions were different. After a topsy-turvy start it suddenly began to dawn on a hard-working and closely knit group of players that the biggest prize of all, one that the county had never won, was truly within their capabilities. They had found the catalyst in Mushtaq Ahmed and, match after match, they found two or three other players to turn games their way.

For their supporters the story that unfolded over the hot, dry summer was scarcely believable. Something, we suspected, would go wrong. When Chris Adams came off for bad light, at a time when he and his team had Surrey on the rack at Hove in early August, it seemed that the players themselves did not really believe they could win the title. Actually, by embracing modern methods, such as plunging the bowlers into ice baths at the end of a day's work and making each player responsible for his own performance, Adams and the coach, Peter Moores, had been preparing them for several seasons for a significant success.

In the final analysis a home draw against Surrey was sufficient. The 2002 champions had already faltered and Lancashire, unfortunate with the weather earlier in the season, had left their challenge too late. Unlike them Sussex had lost only one player, James Kirtley, on England duty and in the end the Championship was won on a great wave of destiny. Fate even decreed an innings defeat against Lancashire at Old Trafford in order to set up a triumph at Hove itself in the last match of the season.

What a joy it was to be there. Nothing will erase the memory of Mushtaq Ahmed's 100th wicket on the first day of the Leicestershire match, nor of Murray Goodwin's pull to mid-wicket soon after lunch on the second afternoon to get the sixth bonus point that secured the title. I shed a few tears and so many were doing the same it is amazing that the deckchairs at the top of the slope were not washed on to the field. Instead it was the players who flowed from the balcony of the new indoor school to embrace Goodwin and Adams and, with the indulgence of the umpires, to run a lap of honour round the ground, waving at friends and strangers alike.

Everyone felt a part of the Sussex family then. Although I have been forced by my job to be objective, the Sussex score is always the one I have wanted to know first since seeing them at Eastbourne in the mid-1950s, two or three seasons after David Sheppard's side had come close to beating Surrey to the title in Coronation Year. I watched in rosy-eyed excitement from the grass on the boundary's edge at The Saffrons, already hopelessly hooked on cricket.

Home was in Surrey by then and there were more opportunities to watch at The Oval than at Hove but my allegiance switched shamelessly back to Sussex 25 years ago, by domicile and through the cricketing development of my sons at Horsham, one of the hotbeds of the county's junior cricket. Naturally for me (and I have been asked to make this personal) it added icing to the cake to have a son involved as the 2003 campaign developed.

Handicapped by a septic finger, Mushtaq could not bowl Sussex to success in the first Championship match, at Lord's, when Middlesex managed the highest total of the game in the fourth innings. The victory in three days against Kent that followed owed most to James Kirtley's 9 for 67 in the match and Murray Goodwin's 96 but against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in the next game came an early crisis. Sussex performed sloppily in the field and collapsed on the last day after Tim Ambrose and Matt Prior had apparently made the game safe. I was driving home from Worcester when I heard they had lost. In private Moores was harshly critical, in public scarcely less so. "The players have got to perform with a commitment which is acceptable to Sussex day in and day out," he told Bruce Talbot of the Brighton Argus.

From then on, in the Championship if not in one-day cricket, they did. Though Surrey beat them at The Oval, despite a noble rearguard by Michael Yardy, last out with only 32 balls left, a 10-wicket victory over Notts at Horsham in the previous match had turned the corner for them, ushering in a period when one after another somebody came to the aid of the side. In that Horsham match Mushtaq, with six wickets in each innings, was aided by centuries from not only Prior and Richard Montgomerie but Kevin Innes, a first-innings stand-in as Kirtley returned from a Test call-up. RMJ made four fifties in succession and finished off Kent with the ball at Tunbridge Wells. Tony Cottey's 188 at Hove set up the first win against Warwickshire since 1991, whereupon the little Welshman made another hundred and Jason Lewry took 10 wickets in the game against Essex, the second of many victories achieved in the final session.

A fourth successive win was secured after tea on the final day at Leicester. Ten wickets in that match took Mushtaq's tally to 65. Cottey made 147, Prior a skittish 96. No play on the first day - a rare interruption by the weather in a season in which Sussex lost less cricket than any other team - effectively cost them another win against Notts at Trent Bridge, where Goodwin returned to form with 148, RMJ made his only hundred of the season and Kirtley took seven wickets.

Adams, after a long struggle for form during which he damaged tendons in an elbow by practising for hours in the nets, came back to form with his first century for 15 months against Surrey at Hove. He scored two hundreds in the home match against Lancashire, when victory was achieved with 12 minutes left. Mushtaq took 11 wickets but Billy Taylor's four top-order wickets were no less crucial. Watching on Ceefax and Cricinfo, I could barely concentrate on the simultaneous Test match.

Another Test had started when Sussex played for the first time like champions elect at Colchester. Goodwin and Montgomerie put on 161 before lunch on the first day, much as Gooch and Hardie, or Gooch and Stephenson, might once have done against Sussex. Goodwin made a double century and Prior an 86-ball hundred. Essex buckled and Sussex went top of the table for the first time.

They faltered after the refurbished scoreboard at Hove had been officially opened in memory of Umer Rashid on the first morning of the match against Middlesex; but Mark Davis marshalled an extraordinary recovery from 105 for 6 to 537 with a career-best 168. Prior made another rapid hundred and by the end of the game Mushtaq's haul had reached 99, taking his personal bonus past £10,000.

From the moment he took the 100th wicket against Leicestershire in the final game it was clear the dream would come true. Born again, as a bowler and a man, Mushtaq, whirling and twirling with dauntless zeal and scoring timely runs himself, had played all season in the true tradition of Ranji, Duleep and Imran Khan. Around him there had always been support.

Now the challenge is to prove it was not a fluke. There are other trophies to win, new members to include, new schoolboys to inspire, other players capable of convincing England selectors they are worthy of a chance. County form is notoriously volatile but, given equal cohesion and attention to detail, this might have been only a start.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins is cricket correspondent of the Times.