Paul Farbrace has slammed his Sussex side’s fielding as “absolutely atrocious” after another heavy defeat.

Sharks went down by eight wickets at previously winless Derbyshire, who reached their target of 300 with 50 deliveries to spare.

Sussex have lost their first three Metro Bank One-Day Cup group games and are staring at elimination less than a week into the competition.

Tom Haines scored 94 for Sussex and Cheteshwar Pujara added a half century but high hopes for this art of the season appear to be in tatters.

Farbrace said: “We didn’t get enough runs, bowled poorly with the new ball and gave them a great start to their run chase.

“There are only so many times we can talk about how we’ve got to learn and get better but there comes a point where you can only do so much talking and today we deserved to lose the game.

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“They were by far the best team, they played the best cricket and their batters when they got in, stayed in.

“It didn’t help that our fielding was absolutely atrocious.

“That’s the worst fielding performance I’ve seen in my time at Sussex, and you can’t expect to win games if you give players lives.

“No excuses, very poor from start to finish, we didn’t play well enough, and they cantered to a very comfortable victory so all in all it’s a really disappointing defeat.”