IPL rejects and England hopefuls breathe new life into County Championship:

The best, most compelling cricket going on anywhere last weekend wasn’t being played in London or Mumbai, but Hove, where Sussex were taking on Middlesex in the Second Division of the County Championship.

There, one of the world’s best young fast bowlers, Shaheen Shah Afridi, was squaring off against one of its best old Test batsmen, Cheteshwar Pujara. The match was in the balance, Sussex were 40 runs ahead and had eight wickets left in their second innings and the two fought over it through that day and into the next. It felt like Championship cricket the way old salts tell you it always used to be back in their playing days.