Sussex coach Mark Davis has ruled out any more reinforcements to the top order after the ‘bonus’ signing of Laurie Evans.
Evans became Sussex’s third addition of the winter after the capture of South Africans Vernon Philander and Stiaan van Zyl when he was released early from his contract by Warwickshire before Christmas.
The 29-year-old has been pencilled in to bat at No.5 in the Championship and with van Zyl also bolstering the top order Davis is confident Sussex’s batting will be strong enough to mount a challenge for promotion back to division one.
Davis said: “Laurie wasn’t really on our radar initially as he was still contracted to Warwickshire so when he became available it came a little bit out of the blue.
“His girlfriend lives in London so we thought we might be in a good place to have a go at signing him and it was a real bonus to get him.
“He is a proven white-ball player and that is a format we are looking to improve on but he is also looking to push on in red-ball cricket. I can see him batting at No.5 in the Championship and with the experience of Stiaan it gives our top order a stronger look.
“We’ve also got Luke Wright who is fit again after having some injury problems last summer and Chris Nash is a consistent run scorer. We’ll be looking for the younger players like Harry Finch and Luke Wells to step up and we also have the option of calling on Ed Joyce if we suffer a few injuries.
“I can’t see us making any more signings for the Championship team. We’re close to securing an overseas player for the T20 competition and then we’ll look at the budget to see if we bring in a second but apart from that I think the squad is in place.”
Davis has also played down often Joyce may feature next season having moved back to Ireland and signing a full-time contract with the national side.
He is theoretically available for seven Championship games if there is no clash with his Ireland commitments but Davis said: “We’ll have to see. A lot will depend on injuries but Ed’s main focus is Ireland now.”
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