The Norwich Union Sunday League is a favourite with the players, the players' wives and the crowds.

The players enjoy the games as a welcome break from the rigours of four-day cricket and from the monotony of wearing white clothes.

The wives are happy because their husbands don't return from the game with stained whites that need washing.

The crowds take pleasure in the shortened version of the game with the knowledge that they will see a result on the day and plenty of runs and wickets.

Basically, everyone's a winner. Our next game in this competition is at Cheltenham on Sunday, a game we must win if we are to start challenging for promotion in the Second Division.

We know the importance of staying up in the First Division of the Championship (with our status helped considerably by an excellent all-round team performance against Somerset on a very flat Taunton wicket), but if we could compliment that with promotion in the coloured clothing then everyone at the club would be delighted.

On the subject of the clothing, in case you were wondering about the colours, I have to remind you that each team designs their own kit.

Any complaints about style or colour co-ordination should therefore be sent to the club itself.

Sussex have taken a break from tradition this year by designing its rather fetching black number with stylish red stripes.

As our club colours have always been blue and gold, it was a brave decision by the Sussex County Cricket Club fashion department to change protocol.

Whilst I think we all look extremely dashing in this year's outfits, there are at least two fundamental flaws in the design. Both are to do with the choice of colour. Black.

Presumably way back in the 18th Century, when the game of cricket was first being played and its rules were invented, some clever chap realised it would have to be a summer game on account of the need for dry surfaces to play on.

I know we don't exactly live in a tropical climate in England but let's face it, it can occasionally get quite warm in the summer.

Now if I remember my GCSE physics correctly (I should have believed them when they said it would come in handy one day) the colour black absorbs heat more efficiently than the colour white.

So we have our first problem. Black clothes + hot sun + efficient heat absorption = very sweaty cricketer. A sweaty cricketer is a smelly cricketer and a smelly cricketer is not a pleasant species.

The changing room can be a pretty unpleasant place to be on the best of days, let alone when we come in from fielding on a hot day!

The second problem is that, so far this season, two other teams we play against (Hampshire and Middlesex) have also played in black.

Imagine 22 cricketers in black on a hot day, the smell must be rather over powering for everyone on the ground. Having both teams in black has also caused confusion amongst players and spectators alike.

Although I have to say that when a Sussex member complained to me that it was very confusing that both teams were playing in the same colour, I did point out that no one complains when we all wear the same white clothes.

No one except the wives maybe!