Hampshire captain Dimitri Mascarenhas will soon become the first English star of the Indian Premier League, but has insisted: "The Championship is still massive."

Mascarenhas will join the Rajasthan Royals in the IPL, the lucrative Twenty20 competition which begins on Friday, from May 12-26.

And with the Rose Bowl due to host Twenty20 Finals day for the first time this season, when both finalists will qualify for the inaugural Twenty20 Champions League, winning the game's shortest format is more rewarding than ever.

Mascarenhas already has some experience of captaining Hampshire in the Twenty20 Cup.

But he leads his county in a first-class match for the first time when champions Sussex visit the Rose Bowl tomorrow, having been named as Shane Warne's successor less than three weeks ago.

And he agrees that leading Hampshire to the LV County Championship would be a greater achievement than winning the inaugural IPL title at the beginning of June.

The 30-year-old said: "There's not one competition we're going for this year but the Championship is still massive.

"It tests you for longer than any other competition over the course of a season so we'll be trying as hard to win it this year, as we have done in any other season.

"Sussex will be a great test to see where we're at.

"If we could have chosen who we wanted first up we would have chosen them because they're the best and we want to play the best."

The rivalry between Hampshire and Sussex during the last three years has been as intense as it has been at any other time in the counties' history.

That is largely down to the intoxicating clash of personalities between Warne and Chris Adams, the man hoping to make Sussex the first county to win three successive Championship titles since Yorkshire in the 1960s.

Now that Warne has retired, the rivalry between the counties is unlikely to be as unfriendly as it has been in recent seasons.

But despite his affable off-pitch persona, Mascarenhas has learnt plenty from Warne and has also gained invaluable experience with England's one-day squad since winning his first cap last year.

He is unlikely to be as voluble as the Australian, but will be no pussycat. "We'll keep going with the aggressive, positive approach that we had under Warney but I'll be captaining Hampshire my way," he said.

Full story and double page Hampshire v Sussex preview in today's Daily Echo.