v Gloucestershire FPT(S) @ Bristol Sunday 20 May 2007

Scorecard

The same side turn out for the Gloucestershire leg of this little away tour and once again we lose the toss.  This time we are playing catch up as Gidman decides to post a score on a fresh-ish morning. 

Well they went about posting a score as they shot away to 107 without loss before Blackwell took a scalp. Steff Jones changed places with Peter Trego in the role of 'Tapmiester' as Ali and Hodnett took 28 off his three overs before he was replaced (one more run that Charl has conceded in 8!).  Caddy also took some hammer and so did Cameron before we put the brakes on a bit with White getting revenge with North's wicket at 161.  Presently they are 195 without further loss after 41 so the rush should come and we could be looking at a score well over 250 unless the bowling booys can get among 'em.

More comment later after a trip to the pub with the radio.

The Bristolians held

Just as I leave Ian gets Ali and they pass 200 three down.  But we still have to keep them in check and Ian and Cameron seem to have been primarily used to do that.  It seems daft that Jonah was brought back at the end of the innings but neither Charl or Caddy were bowled out but he did get Gidman while two other batsmen were run out and we managed to keep them to just over 5 an over at 259.  Not great but a decent holding action and a score we could see as an achievable target.  Then the old Somerset turned up!

It doesn't look like the 'full and frank' discussion after the Sussex game had any real effect on our ability to chase a total of less than 6 an over in a one day game.  Thanks to some decent disguised slow bowling from Ireland and support from his partner Greenidge our front four were disposed of for a paltry 31 runs.  But we didn't panic.  This is why we have Keith Parsons in the side, he  is the man tasked with sorting out our batting failures when they come and he did with a partnership of 61 with Ian Blackwell and we were back on track with confidence in the men still to come based on their performances this season.

When KP was bowled by North, Ian just carried on with Trego and we found ourselves needing only 108 off 14 overs when Trigger decided to go over the top to the boundary on the leg side and picked out the only fielder who didn't have to move to take the catch!

Please someone tell me why?  With 7.7 an over needed why did we need to manufacture boundaries where they didn't exist?  Taking singles and bringing the total down while punishing obvious bad balls seemed to be the way. With Jones, Keiswetter and Caddick to come these two didn't need to win it before the 40th over (perhaps they had forgotten it was a FIFTY over game).  They needed to NOT create a panic but they did and Blackwell - quite capable of winning this game with 5 overs to go and a rate of 7 to keep up lost the plot and his wicket at 171 leaving the tail to make runs from scratch and we were bowled out for 201 with 6 overs and 1 ball to go.

A pathetic loss from a strong position and no lessons learned in the batting from the last poor performance against Sussex.  All credit to the bowlers for holding the opposition.  Some strange bowling decisions but that bit came right. 

Unfortunately, whether we have 100 after 10 overs or we are 4 down with very little on the board we seem incapable of reaching a total in the high 200's through sensible batting.  Maybe we'll learn how to do this in the next competition because our chances of making it through to the semi-finals of this one are dangerously undermined by the capitulation this afternoon.

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