On declarations, rain forecasts and overdue first wins of the season

Gloucestershire 252 (Roderick 59, Riley 3-51) and 443 for 6 dec. (Marshall 118, Stevens 5-87) beat Kent 114 (W Gidman 4-14, Fuller 4-32) and 291 (Harmison 125) by 290 runs

The Jessop Tavern View is delighted to report that the boys wrapped up a deserved first LVCC victory of the season before lunch today at Bristol.

We were thinking of making some snide comments about being lucky that the 'delayed' declaration yesterday didn't lead to the match being affected by the forecast rain, as mentioned by quite a few folk on Twitter and the BBC radio commentary team yesterday. Upon giving it more thought, however, we've decided that Captain Klinger was just supremely confident that we would bowl them out in plenty of time, regardless of the potential for rain today.

There's a definitely a case to be made that, having witnessed Kent slump to 2/4 and 17-5 on Day 1, King John and the brains trust was simply well aware that Kent's batting line-up was pretty useless and unlikely to survive for more than a day, having been set such a huge target. On a fairly blameless pitch according to the players, we managed to score almost 450 in our second innings and yet Kent twice failed to top 300 in an innings, despite Ben Harmison's battling century (incidentally, his 3rd championship ton v the 'shire).

All in all, this was a bloody good performance from Glos, and as the skipper pointed out on the official site link above, a victory we had really earned after been denied by the weather against Glamorgan last month. You could also add that we were unlucky to lose to a trademark Graeme Smith 4th innings special v Surrey last week.There are a few negatives to flag up though. The first innings batting was under par, albeit somewhat obscured by the fairly pathetic effort from Kent. We suffered another tough break, as talented keeper-batsman Gareth (Matthew B)roderick re-broke the same finger which kept him out earlier in the year. We will be without him for 6 weeks and will miss both his runs and athletic keeping at a crucial time of the season.

The bowling cupboard is also pretty threadbare, with Payne and the Sax remaining unfit and Craig Miles still a couple of weeks away from a return.

It seems a shame to end on a moan, but a couple of old gripes continue to rile the Jessop Tavern View. The club is still not getting its communications strategy right. We've heard very little on Saxelby's injury status until a brief mention today and have been reduced to haranguing the @gloscricket Twitter feed for information, to little effect.

Also, the video highlights we try to post at the end of each day's play invariably come courtesy of the oppositions Youtube page or the ECB site. Glos seem unwilling to explain why they have yet to cough up to make access available to video footage from our matches. If almost all the other first class counties can do this, surely the least loyal fans can expect is for the county to update their YouTube page or the official site with match highlights which are available on a daily basis.

We are aware we aren't exactly flush with cash compared to the Surreys of this world. Getting your website updated with relevant news and actually interacting with the fans on Twitter and other social sites isn't rocket science, especially when the new Chief Exec comes from a marketing background.

Rant over. Good win. Let's build on it and actually hit some boundaries in Friday's t20 clash with fellow weaklings Middlesex.

Video highlights from the rest of the match:

Day 3

 

Day 4