Day 1: Glamorgan 202 v Gloucestershire 76 - 5. Oh dear.
Fifteen wickets falling on the opening day of a County Championship match? Time to call in the ECB pitch inspectors? No, just crap batting on a typical first day of a match involving Gloucestershire.
Glamorgan had already won the toss and lost their first wicket by the time I fired up Glos Cricket Radio. It's always encouraging when the opposition win the toss and bat, then end up 26-4! We managed to reduce them to 54-6 and for a moment were looking like bowling them out for a double figure score. However, a partnership of 138 in 22 overs between Ben Wright and former 'Colombian marching powder' fan Graham Wagg put them back on track. We eventually bowled them out for 202, with Ian Saxelby's shoulder remaining in its socket for long enough for him to take a career-best 5-53. Jon Lewis also took 3-40, all LBW and was the only bowler to go at less than 3.5 per over.
This looked rather a good score as the Gloucestershire innings got under way and we were swiftly reduced to 49-4 by some good seam bowling from James Harris and Adam Shantry. Chris Dent has yet to bat, cue speculation in the comments of the Guardian County live blog that we were messing around with the batting order and not showing faith in Chris Dent, despite opening with him last week. It turned out that he dislocated his little finger on his right hand, plus has a double fracture to the finger and will be out for several weeks. This is a blow and we could well be following on tomorrow without his runs. The innings closed with the 'Shire in big trouble at 76-5 with Gidders MKII and Saxelby at the crease.
Hard work will be required tomorrow to avoid a sizeable first innings deficit and a likely pumping from a Glamorgan side out to avenge a stuffing from Leicestershire last week. The only plus point for my co-blogger, who enquired after the score earlier this evening, was that Crofty is not playing and thus cannot spin us to defeat in the second innings.
A pair of long-suffering Gloucestershire County Cricket club fans attempt to put the world (and the Glos administration) to rights. Themes include: Is one England ODI a year a good model for financial success and ground redevelopments, whether a batting average of 35 in Division 2 of the County Championship is acceptable and why Glos continue to be rubbish.
No comments:
Post a Comment