Glos season preview 2012. Disclaimer: we know nothing

The Jessop Tavern View has this week been pondering what to put in this season's preview. Given that the county has lost several players from last year's 4th-placed squad and the only replacement of note has been perennial 2nd XI championship 'star' Dan Housego, we don't really have that much to say. Neither do the media by the looks of it, as so far we have only rated a paragraph or so in both the Guardian and Telegraph season previews.

County cricket has not been at the forefront of our minds recently, at least until we spotted Surrey captain Rory Hamilton-Brown on our run home from work yesterday. For those of you wondering what county players get up to in pre-season, we can exclusively reveal that he was carrying two takeaway pizzas from Pizza Express and a can of Coke! Presumably a Chris Adams-approved pre-match meal.

Anyway, on to matters at Nevil Road. Can fans of the Shire harbour any hope of promotion this year or are we doomed to yet another season of toil near the base of Division Two? To be honest, we don't have a clue!

Batting:

The departure of 2011's leading run-scorer Chris Taylor in fairly shameful circumstances has left a potentially gaping hole in the Glos middle order. The addition of Dan Housego from Middlesex has left us with one big question, how do you pronounce his name? Is it How-sego or House-go? A tricky dilemma for those of us who have barely seen him play. Commenters please feel free to put us right. We will see if his reputation as 'the best player in the 2nd XI championship' can help replace the Child's 1137 runs.

No sooner have we written this then a glance at Cricinfo confirms the slightly more exciting news that we've re-signed Kane Williamson as overseas for the first half of the season! Let's hope Kane can continue his form from the recent test series against South Africa (where he scored a match-saving hundred in the third test) as opposed to last year's Glos form (831 runs at 36.13). His is still only 21 and according to King John has improved in all forms of the game for New Zealand in the past few months. Goodness knows we could use some improvement in limited overs cricket, so let's hope so.

In other batting news, we're hoping from another solid season from captain Alex Gidman, although 1000 championship runs has to be the bare minimum requirement these days. The same should be said of Chris Dent, who can no longer rely on the tag of 'promising youngster' as justification for not converting attractive 50s into 100s.

Worryingly Hamish Marshall has been named vice-captain. Let's hope he's not doing too much mentoring of Housego and the youngsters, otherwise we could be seeing a lot more quick-fire 30s and 40s from the batsmen, before departing LBW to an ugly swipe. Even more worryingly, Jon Batty is still on the books. Notwithstanding the stacks of catches he took in his first season when we had Gemaal Hussain, Kirb and Lewis on the books, surely his signing has been an unmitigated disaster? Here's hoping we're not relying on him for key runs this season.

All-rounders:

It has also been announced that we have signed the lesser-known Muchall brother, all-rounder Paul, from Durham after a pre-season trial. Here's hoping he can recreate the success of the last all-rounder with limited first class experience signed from Durham.

Speaking of Will Gidman, if he can produced 80% of last season's 1006 runs and 51 wickets then Glos fans will be more than happy. We hope you will be, anyway.

Bowling:

For the first time in around 15 years, the seam attack will not be led by Jon Lewis. His departure for the bowler's paradise at The Oval has left a lack of real experience among the promising seam attack. The emergence last year of the better Gidders, David Payne and Liam Norwell, plus the return to fitness of Ian Saxelby has left us with a raw but promising core of quick bowlers. We're also hoping to see more of tearaway Kiwi quick James Fuller, who tore through a team of  Oxford students in a recent pre-season game at The Parks.

The two young spinners, Ed Young and Jack Taylor are both relatively inexperienced, having made their debuts in the last couple of years. Young spent the winter honing his tan skills at the Darren Lehmann academy in Perth and hopefully has returned having picked Lehmann's brain on more than just how to put away an enormous volume of alcohol and still be able to play the next day. On a bright note, the departure of Vikram Banerjee has improved the overall quality of our spin options immeasurably.

Predictions:

Here at the Jessop Tavern View we are not noted for our optimism. With an inexperienced squad shorn of two stalwarts of proven quality in Taylor and Lewis we foresee a season of struggle. The best we can hope for is a repeat of 4th or 5th place and a good run in one of the interminable one day competitions. We fear that 6th or 7th may be more realistic though. Here's looking forward to how it goes.

The hips punishes Coughtrie's miss

Day 2: Gloucestershire 286 v Surrey 392 - 8.

It could have been so different for Gloucestershire today. Having only made 4, Ramprakash pushed at a David Payne delivery slanted across him. Richard Coughtrie went diving across, one handed in front of the skipper at first slip, and shelled it. Had he left it then Gidman would have easily taken it. These things happen. Sadly though Ramps went on to score 141 and take Surrey to a first innings lead of 106. Bugger.

Gloucestershire plugged away manfully with a ball that did no where near as much as it had for Surrey the day before. Whether this was because of poor bowling or a pitch flattening out we shall discover tomorrow.

The most disappointing part of the day occurred in the 10 overs before the new ball was taken. At this point Surrey had just lost Gareth Batty at 263 for 7, and were in danger of conceding a first innings lead to Glos. Bizarrely, Captain Marvel decided that this was the time to rattle through a few quick overs and get to that new ball. Thus we were treated to 10 overs of O'Mish trundling in and poor Jack Taylor pursuing a negative leg stump line. It didn't work. Ramps and Arafat milked the easy bowling for almost 5 an over and by the time the new ball was taken the lead was already approaching 50. In what looked like being a very tight match this period of play could well prove decisive. The fact that the new ball then failed to make the breakthrough merely rubbed salt in the wounds.


Ramprakash's innings was a study in how to ease your way to a championship hundred. He constantly kept himself ticking over with quick singles on the off side. He maneuvered the ball around at will. He only looked to hit the bad ball. You have to wonder exactly what Messrs Hamilton-Brown, Davies, Maynard and Roy were all thinking as they watched 41 year old Ramps at work. All 4 of these extremely talented young guns had looked a million dollars before falling to loose and unnecessarily aggressive shots. We doubt Hamilton-Brown took in very much. He seemed far more interested in making several trips to the ice cream van at the end of the members enclosure. Does having a double barrelled name entitle you to having two flakes in your 99?

So where do Glos go from here? The Surrey fans around me were joking that Linley had been sent in to protect Dernbach so he can have a blast in the morning. Lets hope we can limit the lead to 120 and that the pitch continues to flatten out. O'Mish, Dent and Williamson all owe us runs. We hope that the slightly strange decision to play Jack Taylor in this match doesn't mean we end up ruing being a batsman short. Young Taylor obviously has some talent, but this appears to currently be more with the bat than with the ball. His round arm off spinners provided nothing that Kane Williamson couldn't have.

One final thought. Whilst sat watching Steven Davies at the start of play somebody around me sounded the question, 'Is Davies the only registered gay cricketer?' This begs the bigger question, does the ECB have such a register? Or should perhaps the Cricketer's Who's-Who start to include a question about sexual preference? Please let us know your thoughts.