Finally, some momentum? Twenty20 recap

Gloucestershire 141 for 1 (Marshall 66, Howell 55*) beat Somerset 140 for 8 (Muralitharan 2-20) by nine wickets

Your correspondents at the Jessop Tavern View realise we have been about as reliable at updating the blog as the UK weather has been recently. Our excuse (of course we have one) is the rather disjointed nature of this season's T20 competition. So far, Glos have had 6 fixtures, of which two were won, two lost and the final two abandoned without a ball being bowled. Tonight's match versus Glamorgan could well be heading that way as well if the forecast holds true. This leaves us 4th out of 6 teams in the Midlands/Wales/West group and the Jessop Tavern view none the wiser about whether we have a chance of qualification for the quarter finals. Which stupidly take place two weeks after the last group games finish. (Don't get us started on the fact that the Finals Day takes place on August 25th, a further month later)


What all of this means is that it's been bloody hard to get any momentum going in this season's competition. Unless you are Sussex or Yorkshire who have basically already qualified for the QFs. It's also been hard for us to generate any real enthusiasm for such a disjointed, rain-affected mishmash of a T20 competition.


Still, in our last match we did manage to deliver a 9 wicket hiding to local rivals and fellow cider-lovers, Somerset (Sabres). A decent effort with the ball restricted Somerset to 140, with spinners Murali and Ed Young both bowling economically. Ian Saxelby and James 'sprayer' Fuller took two wickets each, although Fuller did concede a typical 40 runs in getting them. Glos reject, Kevin 'Richard' O'Brien failed against his former paymasters, holing out for just 8 off Fuller and the dangerous Richard '501' Levi also fell cheaply.


The target never really proved too much trouble,once skipper O'Mish and Benny 'and the Jets' Howell put on a rapid 115 for the first wicket. Both reached 50 from less than 40 balls, as Marshall's was the only wicket to fall in an easy run chase that finished with more than 5 overs remaining.

So, back to our earlier point about momentum. Was this result enough to generate some much-needed wins to get us over the line and into the quarter finals? Very hard to tell, given that another no result tonight doesn't really help us and we don't really know how many points will be needed to win the group or qualify as best runner up. All this bloody rain around the country is at least keeping things tight, even if it hasn't made for much of a spectacle as yet. Still, we're nothing if not optimists here at the Jessop Tavern View. So, come on the boys in the last 3 group matches, do us proud!