Captaincy

The tables below set out records for the main categories of individual achievement in the men’s official County Championship starting in 1890.
Names of Sussex-born players are set in italics.

Most matches as captain#

Pos

Player

Matches

Seasons

Highest finish

1

A.E.R.Gilligan

166

1920-1929

4th in 1929

2

C.J.Adams

165

1998-2008

1st in 2003, 2006, 2007

3

R.G.Marlar

137

1955-1960

4th in 1955

4

J.R.T.Barclay

117

1979-1986

2nd in 1981

 

H.P.Chaplin

117

1910-1914

6th in 1914

6

A.J.Holmes

115

1925, 1935-1939

5th in 1937

7

W.L.Murdoch

113

1893-1899

5th in 1899

8

M.G.Griffith

101

1968-1972

7th in 1969

9

K.S.Ranjitsinhji

100

1896, 1899-1903,
1908, 1912, 1920

2nd in 1902, 1903

10

E.R.Dexter

98

1960-1965

4th in 1960, 1963

11

A.P.Wells

95

1990-1996

7th in 1996

12

A.H.H.Gilligan

86

1920, 1922-1930

7th in 1930

 

H.T.Bartlett

86

1939-1949

9th in 1947

14

Jas Langridge

83

1950-1953

10th in 1951

15

C.L.A.Smith

77

1905-1909,1911

4th in 1909

Notes: The table lists all players captaining the side in 75 or more matches. In a small number of matches, information on captains is missing: this may affect the figures for one or two players listed above. The years given in the ‘Seasons’ column include matches where a player was a ‘stand-in’ captain, in addition to those as a full ‘appointed’ captain for a season. The ‘Highest Finish’ column refers to seasons in which the player was a full ‘appointed’ captain.
 
G.A.K. Collins is the youngest player to captain the side: he was 20 yr, 1 mth in the match v Somerset, Bath, 1929. K.S.Ranjitsinhj, then the Maharajah of Nawanagar, is the oldest player to captain the side: he was 47 yr, 10 mth in the match v Yorkshire, Leeds, 1920.