T20 cricket- It's easy when you know how

Gloucestershire 99 for 0 (Dent 63*) beat Glamorgan 98 for 9 (Payne 3-17, Young 3-21) by 10 wickets


This half of the Jessop Tavern View hasn't seen Gloucestershire play live for quite a while now, so it was a rare treat to witness the boys play at at a sold-out Cheltenham yesterday. We have fond memories of endless summer days spent at the best festival outground watching former Glos legends like Matt 'Steamy' Windows and Shaun Young put county opposition to the sword under cloudless skies.

Yesterday was no different, as an efficient Gloucestershire performance saw off Glamorgan with the minimum of fuss. The only difference between Cheltenham festivals of yore was that we were playing T20 and the Jessop Tavern View was this time enjoying a cold beer to help stave off the heat of the merciless sun.

Glamorgan have previously been one of the season's best T20 outfits. We we feeling a little apprehensive when they won the toss and elected to bat on the usually batsman-friendly Cheltenham deck. 6 overs in and the the powerplay overs ended with Glamorgan teetering at a comic 31-5. Two or three top order batsmen perished to leading edges and veteran Murray Goodwin played a horrid walking slap straight to Christian at point. The pitched seemed slow and somewhat two-paced, but it was hard to tell whether it was good bowling and fielding or merely terrible batting which was more responsible.

Glamorgan did rebuild somewhat through useless former Glos overseas, Marcus North and Nick James. They put on 37, before North showed why even the hapless Aussies tourists won't be looking his way this summer, by reverse sweeping Young straight to the increasingly immobile figure of Gidders at backward point.

Glamorgan limped through the remainder of their 20 overs, capping the innings with a tame run out off the last ball to end of 98-9. That was pretty much game over, as Corporal Klinger and Chris Dent showed that the pitch held no demons by knocking off the runs with 7.1 overs to spare. Dent was particularly impressive in scoring 63* with shots all around the wicket. Having never seen Dent bat in the flesh, this was an opportunity to witness his full range of shots, albeit under minimal pressure against a deflated opposition. We were particularly impressed with his deft back cuts and nimble footwork against spin.

So, what to make of about the shortest and most comprehensive T20 victory we've ever witnessed? It's perhaps best to defer to this half of Jessop Tavern View's wife, who was enjoying her first ever game of cricket, despite 7 years living in Australia. Her verdict was along the lines of 'that wasn't as bad or as long as I had feared, I quite liked it.' She's now been officially adopted as a good luck charm and the aim is to 'encourage' her to attend many more matches in future, to help guarantee easy Glos victories. Watch this space to read how well that works out for us...

Unfair pitch confines Glos to t20 also rans

t20: Warwickshire beat Glos by 6 wickets.

"It's not fair. It's not fair. Mummy it's not fair. The bad men prepared a slow, spinning pitch and we were unable to adapt to it because we were promised it would be hard and bouncy and it's not fair mummy. It's not fair."

Gloucestershires abject t20 form continued this season with a comprehensive pumping from Warwickshire than now pretty much confines the Shire to 5 meaningless games with little hope of progressing into the quarter finals.

In a bizarre step Kaiser Tom felt the need to issue an apology for the pitch. Gloucestershire were obviously expecting something similar to the marble slab they had been using in the championship game. Instead they got a slow bunsen. The Jessop Tavern View wasn't at the match, but we presume that both sides had to use the same track? Thus why Glos felt the need to moan about heaven knows. T20 cricket is all about adapting very quickly to situations and blatantly Gloucestershire failed to adjust to being confronted with a pitch which wasn't what they were expecting. As professional cricketers you'd like to think that they could suss out the pitch pretty quickly and react accordingly. Clearly not.

So why did Kaiser Tom apologise. We guess that since this was the first t20 match at Cheltenham Glos had been hoping to really cash in on bumper crowds. However, we reckon they aren't really going to have too much trouble selling out all of the t20 matches this week so that isn't really a concern. Just because a pitch isn't 100% batsman friendly doesn't mean you can't have an exciting game of cricket. Last weeks test match at Trent Bridge proved that. If anything the Kaiser should be apologising for a poor performance from Gloucestershire who were bowled out for just 96. Dastardly Warwickshire, who had a chance to weigh up how to bat on the pitch, knocked the runs off with almost 3 overs to spare.

After the good 'white ball' cricket Glos had been playing in the YB40 its very disappointing that this years t20 campaign hasn't ever got off the ground. And speaking of not getting off the ground. We've criticised the Gloucestershire on numerous occasions (rightly so) for being the worst website on the county circuit. However, with their fancy new facelift they also seem to have got a bit ballsy!

"Overseas signing Dan Christian, yet to make a meaningful contribution since arriving from Australia, suffered another failure"

A fair assessment, but shouldn't it be us who are saying that. Shouldn't the official site be getting behind the boys! Professional website design; still amateur content. Although amusingly amateur content.

t20 comes to Cheltenham

What's this? Common sense? t20 at Cheltenham?

With the announcement today of the fixtures for the 2013 season special mention needs to be made of the genuinely exciting news that the Cheltenham cricket festival will play host to 3 matches from the t20 circus. Considering the tremendous crowds that the drab 40 over competition use to be able to pull to the college ground the Jessop Tavern View is actually quite excited by the prospect of watching James Fuller go for 38 an over in front of a packed house in Cheltenham. Throw in the tiny boundaries that the old college ground provides and you have the genuine possibility that Fuller may have the opportunity to eclipse his efforts of last seasons quarter final. Lets just hope that none of Warwickshire, Northants or Glamorgan sign Scott Styris!

Congratulations to Glos for managing to sort out the fixtures to make t20 at Cheltenham a reality, and praise be for small mercies that Glos decided to sacrifice some of the extra profit, that we are always told is created by playing the twenty over games at Bristol, in order to drum up some genuine excitement amongst the supports.

Roll on july!