Luke Wright: Sussex Blast triumph would be 'ideal' send-off for Jason Gillespie

“I felt like I played pretty nicely last year, but this year with people missing and Laurie leaving, it’s been nice to step up,” he says. “I hadn’t picked up a bat for the best part of seven months coming into this: my last cricket was the Abu Dhabi T10 in November, and then I was coaching with the Stars in the Big Bash.”I thought I’d pick the bat up again in March but I was furloughed until three weeks before the tournament. My first bat against bowlers was Tymal Mills in training, which was nice: I literally had just him, and a bit of Chris Jordan, bowling at me for three weeks. It was disgraceful, especially when half the time there’s been no sightscreen or the odd dodgy wicket.”It was a baptism of fire, but you’re over-training when you face those two blokes. It probably set me up really well, as uncomfortable as it was, and as much as I was trying not to break my fingers along the way. Everyone else seems a lot slower after facing them.”Wright is the second-highest run-scorer in the tournament as of Tuesday morning, averaging 43.57 while striking at 150.24 – significantly quicker than the 125.97 he managed last year. He puts that down to a different role, with more onus on him to get Sussex off to quick starts while Salt has been away, but says that at 35, he still feels near his best.”You learn to play the scenarios, and the different roles,” he explains. “When I was younger, I wouldn’t have necessarily had the ability to rein it in on a trickier wicket, or while batting with someone like Salty: it was just see ball, hit ball. But that makes you less consistent.”Often in cricket, we’re very quick to try and get older players to retire, or are shocked when they do well, but I think now you can go on into your late 30s and early 40s, especially with extra recovery time if you don’t play all formats – I think Stevo [Darren Stevens] has shown that.””If we could win it and send him off with a trophy, that’d be ideal”•Getty ImagesIn the absence of some senior players, Delray Rawlins has stepped up in the middle order – “he’s starting to become the talent we know he can be; when he gets going he’s hard to stop” – but Ravi Bopara has struggled after making the move to the South Coast, with a top score of 18 in seven innings.”I feel sorry for him,” Wright says. “He’s more of a rhythm player than I am, so that lack of preparation has been really tough. Our fans would have been right behind him, singing his name, and helping him to bed in. But last year he had a very quiet start, and came romping home for the last four or five games. I’m sure he’ll win us a game single-handedly pretty soon.”This is a really tough league. You don’t feel like there are any easy fixtures that you can just turn up to and win. But if you’d have offered me the position we’re in right now at the start of the comp, we’d definitely have taken it: going into the last three games with our destiny in our own hands.”Sussex have been boosted by confirmation of Salt’s availability for Wednesday night’s game against Surrey at The Oval, and are waiting anxiously to hear about Mills’ scan results after he left the field with a back complaint on Monday. A win against the group leaders would mean they had one foot in the knockout stages, and nudge them a step closer towards winning the tournament in Jason Gillespie’s final month as head coach.”He’s been great for me as captain,” Wright says. “He doesn’t feel like he has to dominate; he’s open to ideas and lets us senior players go about it how we want to. His new job is a great opportunity for him but I know he’s sad to be leaving Sussex. If we could win it and send him off with a trophy, that’d be ideal.”