In appreciation of Luke Wright, Sussex's T20 enigma

The Cricketer looks at the numbers behind the Sharks' all-conquering captain, who is showing few signs of slowing down ahead of a 20th senior campaign

Britney Spears' Everytime was No.1 in the UK singles charts. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was top of the box office. Greece were about to win the men's football European Championships. And 17-year-old Maria Sharapova was a women's singles champion at Wimbledon in waiting.

Meanwhile, at the County Ground on the south coast at Hove a peroxide blonde, spikey-haired allrounder was making his T20 debut.

At a time when the 20-over format was very much still finding its feet - this was just the second edition of the Twenty20 Cup - the same could be said of Wright. He'd made his first-class debut aged 18 in 2003 for Leicestershire, before trading Grace Road for Sussex.

Wright was widely tipped to make a big impression on the game having represented England at Under-17 and Under-19 level. That said, if you'd asked anyone for an assessment of his credentials after figures of 2-0-23-1 and one-off two balls with the bat against Surrey on July 2, 2004, it mightn't have been overly favourable.

Throw forward nearly 20 years, 336 T20s later - 173 in the Blast for Sussex alone - there is no doubting his status as one of English cricket's great constants of the format.

You'll do well to find a statistic from Sussex's Blast history that doesn't see Wright if not at the top, certainly in the higher echelons.

His 4,868 runs are the most by any player in the competition's history. And before you dismiss this stat as being a symptom of his longevity, it comes with an average of 33.57 and at a strike rate of 149.18. 

^{Wright in action against Yorkshire in 2007 (Julian Herbert/Getty Images)}

That scoring rate is upheld by the most boundaries by any batter in English cricket's premier T20 showcase. You'd think hitting the rope 509 times and clearing it on 178 occasions would prove tedious, but not for the evergreen Wright, who is a dominant risk-taker at the top of the order.

Of his five three-figure scores in the Twenty20 Cup, only two players have surpassed his unbeaten 153 against Essex at Chelmsford in July 2014.

It was at this stage of the Grantham-native's career that he started to have clarity in his work. The aforementioned ton was four months removed from what would be his 101st and final England outing in the second T20I against West Indies in Barbados.

"Being back with Sussex I probably knew I wouldn't be involved with England, certainly at the start of the season, after not performing well so I knew I just had to knuckle down. I'm at the point now where I feel like I'm in the best form of my life. I hope I get another chance," he told ESPNCricinfo.

When you talk to batters, particularly those who dominate the shorter formats, one consistent them is around simplicity and execution. Only when they clear their minds can their best cricket come to the fore. Not chasing acceptance by England in many ways brought out Wright's best.

In a team sport relying on individual contributions, Wright has proven to be the perfect ally. Twenty-five times the Sharks have put on century partnerships and in 17 of those Wright was one of the batters. And they stretch all the way from the 107 made with Murray Goodwin in 2007, to the 102 put on with Ravi Bopara during last season's competition.

^{Wright's international career came to an end in the Caribbean (Jewel Samad/ Getty Images)}

His days as a bowler are understandably over. Indeed, they ended in 2014 but it is difficult to dispute that it hasn't paid dividends. When you have an attack of Jofra Archer, Tymal Mills and Rashid Khan to call on, a medium-pacer rolling in at 76 mph suddenly doesn't seem important.

Though he has appeared in the last four T10 League tournaments, Sussex have Wright almost exclusively on tap. And thanks to his most recent contract signed two years ago, that'll be until at least the end of the 2023 campaign.

If the endless flow of runs doesn't convince you that Wright is not yet done with professional cricket, then his appetite surely will. Reacting to the news of the departure of Chris Jordan and Phil Salt, ahead of Sussex's fifth Finals Day appearance last summer, there is nothing about his passionate response that says he is ready to pack it in.

"Any time you get lads going into their last year [of their contract], it's going to be difficult - they are high-quality cricketers and there are always going to be counties that want them," he said. "Add in the Hundred now - whether it's playing a part or not, who knows - but I'm sad to see them go.

"It's something from the club's point of view that we need to look at because we can't be losing our best players all the time. Myself and Ravi are getting older and that's the challenge they've got - our recruitment process has got to be really strong and it's something that probably hasn't been as good as it should be at this moment in time."

It is hard to remember a time without Luke Wright. And plenty wouldn't have it any other way.