v Glamorgan 20/20 @ Taunton 5 July 2004

Well we were always gonna be up against it and the best we could hope for was a better performance against better opposition on home turf.  What we got was a little more than that - a fighting score and a game that went to the line.  With more experience on the park we would have taken this one but we made the Welshmen fight for it and that is a move in the right direction.

Glamorgan won the toss and that was going to make it a very short night in the eyes of a lot of us.  We were going to bat and we haven't been very good at that.  They were going to bowl and they've been doing that quite well.

Things looked to be following the normal course with Jamie Cox going before wwe hit 20 and Dutch and Burns putting on a few (the captain was adjudged 'run out' - not from where I was watching the big TV he wasn't!) but leaving the scene before we got far over 50 and well inside halfway.  Although Dutch did take us to 50 with a six!

Enter James Hildreth, Keith Parsons and John Francis.  Hildreth  played the 'Destroyer' role while KP and JF kept up their end and smashed the odd one!  He went to 50 off 25 and when he finally went we were past 150 (an achievement in itself) and heading for bigger things.

It didn't carry on that way after Hildreth went but everyone added something off not very many and we ended up with 193.  The highest first innings score of the night

It was a formidable total but we needed one more experienced seamer and we didn't have him.  Laraman did his best with 36 off 4 and a wicket and Gareth Andrew got better, his last over was great but a little too late.  It's a shame that Dutch  could only bowl four (4 for 30). But Si Francis leaked just over 11 and over, Thos Hunt came back well from a real pasting in his first.  Hancock got it real wrong and went for 16 off his one and only.  We just weren't tight enough and both Thos and John Francis had a mare in the field with two dropped catches to 'Junior' - the first very important at an early stage and too many errors on the boundary.  Hunt got cheered when he did it right...shows how badly he got it wrong.

KP must have wished for the opportunity to bowl and if Burnsy hadn't been behind the stumps he would most certainly have brought himself on.  But no-one looked like taking wickets by the 10th over and Glamorgan, in the form of Ian Thomas took us to the cleaners and hammered 116 off 57 balls.  We died 3 balls short after Andrew had given us a lifeline with his last one going for a mere 2 and Franky had given it back as his last went for 17.

We couldn't keep them in check but they had to bat really well to beat us and the guys can hold their heads a little higher that they made a game of it and the Dragons had to play at the top of their game to take home the points.  Line and length is still a problem and sharpness in the field is not our forte but the batting had something tonight and its name was Hildreth!!

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