The artist formerly known as Kaiser Tom

Kaiser Tom needs our support! And knowing the Jessop Tavern View's love of fine art, the Kaiser has dusted off his paintbrushes, dug out his easel, and whipped up a few artists impressions of what Nevil road could look like. Hideous. The ground proposal, that is. The Jessop Tavern View is quite a fan of the art.

The new proposal is more environmentally friendly with exciting additions such as dual flush toilets, restricted flow taps and solar panels sure to ease the concerns of local residents who objected to the shear bloody size of the buildings. 

Frankly this proposal has gone on for so long that we are now actually fully behind it, if for no other reason than at least we can draw a line under the whole thing and move on....in whichever direction that may be.

So if you want to back the campaign, then get yourselves across to the club website and send a message to Bristol city council. The new proposal will be heard on May 30th.

Elephants in the asylum

Bloody hell it's tough keeping up with Gloucestershire this off-season, with the clubs financial position seemingly more precarious than a pensioner under George Osborne's chancellorship. Last week the club announced that the city council have granted Glos a loan of £400,000 to cover running costs until the planning dispute is resolved (that will be the same city council that rejected our planning proposal). Everybody understand? No. Well, quite. We haven't got a bloody clue. Why do we need this loan? We presume that it's because all our money is tied up in the ground redevelopment, hence the mess made of poor Chris Taylor's contract. This really is a mess, and not exactly helped by the lack of information made available to us long distance fans. If we hadn't been granted this loan then what would have happened? Precarious indeed.

The clubs appeal against the original rejection of the ground redevelopment plan has seen the 7 storey block of flats reduced to a six storey block, but with the same number of properties. Since the original decision was a fairly close vote this small tweak might well do the trick. The club remain convinced that maintaining Nevil Road as an international ground provides the most viable means for the club to prosper, but we are not the only ones questioning this and wondering whether Nevil Road might become a white elephant. (We're not entirely sure about the white elephant analogy, but if you were a Cricinfo writer asked to pen something about Gloucestershire cricket you'd probably be pretty lazy too)

In more positive news, King John has signed a 3 year extension strapping him to the sinking ship until she goes completley under, or 2015. We're not sure which will come first. Whilst Bracewell might not have brought the success of his first spell with the club, he did a good job last year and in such turbulent times having an experienced man signed up for the long term can only bring some sort of stability.

In less positive news, Hamish O'Marshall has been appointed vice-captain. However, to put a positive spin on this, O'Mish is still taking in the last few rays of Kiwi sun before heading back to the Shire to mentor our young players about how all you have to do is have one good year and you'll pretty much have a contract for life.

With the new season now only a matter of weeks away, the Jessop Tavern View will head off to draw up some sort of season preview, but will leave the final positive words to King John,

“I hope everyone associated with Gloucestershire cricket will be prepared to show a degree of patience.
“We have lost a lot of experience from our playing ranks during the winter and must therefore reassess our goals.
“There has to be realism because the average age of the team had plummeted to around 22 and we have a comparatively small squad.
“It’s a time for getting behind these young guys and supporting them so that they have every chance to become the good cricketers they can be.”

We'll ignore the next part of the article that described Dan Housego as 'one of the best 4 batsmen in second XI cricket'. His 36 ball 4 against a bunch of Welsh students yesterday, in a game where even Jon Batty got to 50, probably proves King John's point.

Minor county cricket, here we come....

Sat here watching the first morning of the 'desert-ed' test in Dubai the Jessop Tavern View is feeling inspired again. There's nothing like a little bit of mystery spin with your corn flakes to get the cricket juices flowing. It also seems like quite a pertinent time to climb back into the blogging saddle. Watching cricket, in a town where no one really cares for the game, and in a nicely developed ground that is full to bursting with empty seats....it's what Nevil Road could have been if it weren't for those pesky politicians.

Ah yes, Gloucestershire's ground redevelopment proposal has been turned down and the Jessop Tavern View is now cursing the couple of minutes it wasted sending a begging email to the planning committee asking them to let the oversized, rowdy student flats (with no parking) to be built. Ok ok. So they weren't student flats in the final proposal, but the damn proposal went through so many changes we might have been applying to build a leper colony for all we know.

Last Wednesday, Bristol City council turned down the proposal in a narrow vote of 6 to 4. Kaiser Tom was predictably, "bitterly disappointed", presumably because he will actually now have to come up with a feasible solution to financing Gloucestershire cricket rather than relying on the dream that was a solitary international fixture every year.

The Kaiser commented.“This decision means that the International cricket programme in Bristol now stops and will be lost forever.  Furthermore, our overall future in Bristol is also in doubt.  It is no secret that Gloucester would be very keen to have us.  The funding from the development will be lost and the City risks losing what could be its only sports stadium. We need to consider our options, but time is running out.” 

Now the Jessop Tavern knows very little about the goings on in the boardroom of Gloucestershire County Cricket club. We're are imagining lots of cups of tea, some nice sandwiches, and then some editing of the poster for international fixture. Exactly how 'keen' Gloucester are to having county cricket is difficult to guage. We're a little skeptical.The story is that we would go and play at the old Wagon Ground, where we played between 1923 and 1992, and where Wally hammond was scored 317 out of a total of 400. Now the Jessop Tavern doesn't really remember these glory days, but we do wondering exactly where the money would come from in order to build the infrastructure needed for this site to host professional (well, sort of..) cricket.

So what happens next? There is talk of an appeal, but surely this is wasted effort. You have to love how Gloucestershire's official line is that there was "extensive public consultation" over the planning application, so extensive in fact that local residents formed a very well organised campaign group, Howzat. Clearly the club listened hard to what the locals wanted. Howzat explain why the proposal was turned down.



So based on this, its unlikely that any appeal would be able to address the 3 principal reasons for turning down the proposal in the first place. We are no experts, but who the hell for a seven story building was going to fit into the local area.....especially without enough car parking!

So where does the club go from here? What does this mean for the conditional contracts offered to Chris Taylor and Hamish O'Marshall. Who will replace Marshall's 401 runs? Is minor county cricket an inevitability? Would Jon Batty score any runs at this level?

Is it time for Gloucestershire to take a serious look at themsleves and reconsider exactly what sort of cricket club they are? I guess the curse of having such a large, and reasonably developed ground is that it has left Gloucestershire some what in limbo. A club that, in reality, are too small for their ground. Having a ground that has the potential to hold international cricket meant that increasingly over the last few years the principal focus of Gloucestershire cricket club was to provide for an international fixture at Bristol, in much the same way that county cricket provides for Test cricket. The only reason the cricket club existed was so that an international match could be held.

Now that will have to change. With no international matches set for the future Gloucestershire county cricket club will have to think about....well, cricket. It won't be an easy transition. But wouldn't it be nice to see the club move to a nice small, intimate ground that had a bit of personality, and to see a group of youngsters try to earn their spurs. It surely sounds better than more years watching Jon Batty and O'Mish running around Nevil Road.