Day 1: Glos 224-6 v Derbyshire: The split personalities necessary of a Gloucestershire fan

I was tempted to write this post earlier on this afternoon. The score had just become 65-5 and I had fired of the obligatory whining text to a fellow Glos fan that simply stated, All out for a 100? I thought I had seen it all before (in fairness I have seen it all before, and not just the once) I thought I knew what was coming next. The only difference this time was that last years bowling attack wasn't even there to offer us even a glimmer of a way out. This was terminal. All my worst fears being thrown in my face just after lunch on the first day of the season. I couldn't bear it anymore. I even stopped watching the Glos cricket radio webcam. Oh how little faith.

In some ways I wish I had written this post earlier. You might as well be made to eat your words early on in the season and make sure that, just in case anyone actually did value your opinion, they don't anymore. But I didn't write that post and so I can now write to congratulate the boys on putting up more of a fight with bat in hand than they did all of last season put together. As a fan it is all you can ask for. Even if you are rubbish, at least get stuck in. And that is exactly what they did.

Whoever Richard Coughtrie is might not be able to middle the ball, but at least he stuck it out.

According to Glos la la la Jon Batty played his best innings in a Gloucestershire shirt and has already scored about a seventh of the total number of runs he managed last year!

And Will Gidman managed to show enough to suggest that it might be Alex that ends up as the Edward Grace of the family (disappointingly there don't appear to be many cricketing examples of good brother, crap brother...unless you count the Hollioake's, but then which of them was good?)

So all in all an encouraging day. If we remove the blinkers for a second then its clear that the top order lacks class, but with Williamson and O'Mish to presumably step in to that batting line up we shouldn't be too down on our showing before lunch. What disappointed so much last season was the continuously shoddy batting performance that showed a lack of anyone willing to apply themselves properly. Today we had two innings of great application. It's a start.

Exactly what sort of score we'll need is anyones guess as I haven't a clue what our attack is like! Anything above 300 should put us in the game.