James Tredwell has admitted that sharing his time between Kent and Sussex is “tough”, but is grateful for the opportunity to feature in four-day cricket.

32-year-old Tredwell has been England’s first choice spinner in ODI and T20 matches for the last couple of years, but has found himself out of the Kent side in the County Championship for almost the entire season, having been rested to work on his technique after playing so much limited-overs cricket in recent times.

With 22-year-old Adam Riley coming in in his place and impressing with 40 First Class wickets already this campaign, Tredwell’s opportunities in four-day cricket have been limited, leading him to join Sussex on a one-month loan deal.

The agreement sees Tredwell returning to Kent to feature for them in limited-overs matches, but providing an off-spin option for Sussex in Division One of the LV= County Championship.

As luck would have it, having featured in his first four-day game for Sussex last week, Tredwell then came up against his new teammates the very next day, as Sussex beat Kent by 35 runs in the NatWest T20 Blast at Canterbury last Friday night.

“There’s no doubt it’s tough”, the Ashford-born slow bowler admitted when discussing his current situation.

“It was always going to happen that way, wasn’t it?! The first week was going to be against them on the return fixture!

“It’s serving a purpose. Obviously I know a few of them [in the Sussex squad] from playing with and against them over the years. It’s good fun, but equally it was nice to come back and pull on the Kent shirt again.”

Tredwell still harbours dreams of adding to his one Test cap for England, earned on their tour of Bangladesh in 2010. With the national side electing not to field a frontline spinner in their recent Test series loss at home to Sri Lanka, Tredwell is hopeful that some decent performances in Sussex’s four-day side could keep him in England Head Coach Peter Moores’ reckoning.

“It’s England’s James Tredwell in one-day cricket. Arguably, my four-day performances haven’t been up to scratch over the last 12 or 18 months probably, so I needed to get some overs in”, Tredwell explained.

“I needed to do work on my game, initially, which I did with Min Patel after the Worcester match [Kent’s first Championship game of the season, after which he was dropped].

“I feel in a really good place at the moment – it came out really nicely for 59 overs [in his Sussex debut against Yorkshire].

“I know they’re for Sussex, but I want to put in performances for myself and feel proud in my performances again.”

“I’m the wrong side of 30, shall we say, so I just felt at the time that if there was an opportunity for me to play First Class cricket, I had to take it.

“That’s where you want to be putting in the performances, and to be seen, not only to be picked for Kent, but obviously I want to stay in the England one-day setup, so the more my name’s out there, who knows?

“Equally, if I put in performances – everyone keeps saying that they need a spinner in the Test side, so you just don’t know what might come from it. Hopefully something like that is the result.”

“It’d be nice to be that frontline spinner [in the Test side], no doubt. But there are two or three of us out there that are also in the same scenario. The only way you’re going to get in there is with performance, and that’s what we’re all striving to do.”