More than a thousand wickets fell to Tony Buss's right arm during his years on the Sussex staff, a return that made him one of the county's most durable fast bowlers of the 1960s and 1970s. Antony Buss, known throughout his career as Tony, died on 7 September 2026, six days after his 87th birthday, BBC Sport reported.

Buss was born on 1 September 1939 in the Sussex village of Brightling. He came onto the county staff as a right-arm fast-medium bowler and tail-end right-handed batsman, and played for Sussex from 1958 to 1974, winning his county cap in 1963.

Across 310 first-class matches for Sussex, spending his entire career at Hove, he took 958 wickets at an average of 25.04, with a career-best of eight for 23. Counting his one-day cricket for the county, his tally reached 1,098 wickets in all formats from 413 appearances, BBC Sport reported. He was a defiant lower-order batsman rather than a stylist, finishing with 4,415 first-class runs, a highest score of 83, and 129 catches taken in the field.

Buss was part of the Sussex team that reached the 1970 Gillette Cup final at Lord's, the county's fourth final in eight seasons, where they lost to Lancashire. The following year, Sussex granted him a benefit season in recognition of his service on the staff.

His younger brother, Mike Buss, also played for Sussex, from 1961 to 1978, the pair forming one of the club's few sibling partnerships on the same books.

When his playing days ended in 1974, Buss stayed close to home. He owned a sports shop in Lancing and later ran two sub-post offices before retiring to Worthing, The Cricket Paper reported. Sussex had not forgotten him: in March 2015, more than forty years after he took his last wicket for the county, members elected him a Vice-President of Sussex County Cricket Club alongside fellow former player Murray Goodwin, according to Title Sussex Magazine.

What Buss left in the Sussex scorebooks is exact: 958 first-class wickets at 25.04 in a career that ran from 1958 to 1974, a benefit season the county granted him in gratitude, and a Vice-President's title the club handed back to him decades after his final over. Between the shop and the sub-post offices he ran in Lancing and the retirement he settled into in Worthing, the years after cricket carried the same steadiness as the years on the field at Hove.