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Gloucestershire have been given a home tie against Sussex in the semi-finals of the first Benson & Hedges Super Cup, as they attempt to reach a Lord's final for the first time in 22 years.

Mark Alleyne's side, who beat Surrey by seven wickets in the quarter-finals yesterday, have avoided competition favourites Warwickshire and Yorkshire, who face each other a day earlier on July 10.

David Graveney, the former Gloucestershire captain who is now England's chairman of selectors, welcomed the draw. ``Anybody, in a semi-final, wants to play at home and they would have probably wanted to avoid Warwickshire and Yorkshire,'' he said.

Graveney admitted that with the World Cup taking precedence over the domestic game, the new Benson & Hedges competition for the top eight sides in last season's County Championship has taken a backseat.

``After the World Cup it's reasonably low key but now all the players will see it as one step away from a showpiece final at Lord's,'' Graveney said.

Mike Atherton's back complaint has flared up again to rule the former England captain out of Lancashire's County Championship match against Essex at Old Trafford today.

Atherton needs more treatment for the condition that forced him out of England's World Cup squad and has allowed him to play in just two matches - one a second XI fixture - this summer.

Richard Montgomerie,the former Oxford University captain and opening batsman who was released by Northamptonshire last autumn, has received his county cap only three months after making his first appearance for Sussex.

Montgomerie, 27, has scored 629 first-class runs this season at an average of 48.He has hit four fifties in 14 innings to go with two centuries, including a match-winning 110 in the recent victory at Headingley which lifted Sussex to sixth in the table.

His cap was awarded at Hove last night, before the day-night National League match against his old county was abandoned because of rain without a ball being bowled.

John Langridge, considered by many as the finest opening batsman never to have played for England, has died at the age of 89.

Langridge, the leading run-scorer for Sussex, had been ill for some time and died in a nursing home in Eastbourne.

He hit a record 76 centuries for the county and scored 34,152 runs in a career which lasted from 1928 to 1955 - nearly 5,000 more than Sussex's second highest run-getter, Ken Suttle.

Benson & Hedges Super Cup.- Semi-finals. Warwicks v Yorks (July 10, Edgbaston) Gloucs v Sussex (July 11, Bristol).