Josh de Caires powers Middlesex to win over Sussex

MEN'S T20 BLAST ROUNDUP: The 24-year-old top-scored with 80 not out off 44 balls, before taking a wicket at Hove to earn Middlesex their first T20 Blast win of the season

ECB Reporters Network | 30/05/2026 at 22:05

Hove: Middlesex 213-4, Sussex Sharks 182 - Middlesex won by 31 runs

It was third time lucky for Middlesex, who won their first T20 Blast match of the season with an impressive display against Sussex at Hove, with the home side replacing them at the bottom of the South Group table.

Middlesex scored a challenging 213 for 4, propelled by a 41-ball 77 by opener Max Holden, who hit five sixes and six fours.

Opening partner Adam Rossington had fallen in the fourth over, cramped by the pace of Tymal Mills, and played a short-arm hook to deep backward square-leg.

But left-hander Holden was in fine form and raised the fifty in the sixth over when he guided a Mills delivery to the third man boundary.

He put on 95 for the second with Joshua De Caires, who made his maiden Blast fifty and went on to score an unbeaten 80 from 44 deliveries, with five sixes and seven fours.

And when Holden holed out in the deep the ball after striking Danny Briggs for his final six, captain Leus du Plooy added 65 for the third wicket with De Caires to put Sussex on the back foot.

The Sussex bowling attack missed Ollie Robinson and Henry Crocombe – called up by England and England Lions, respectively. Mills, who took three wickets, bowled well, and sometimes with real pace, but apart from the experienced Briggs, whose four overs cost just 33 runs, the other Sussex bowlers were expensive.