Something in the water as Glos wrap up consecutive away wins

Gloucestershire 388 (Dent 116, Marshall 58, Tavare 53, Jarvis 4-121) and 275 for 9 dec (Marshall 92, Handscomb 76, Siddle 4-39) beat Lancashire 364 (Horton 168, Norwell 4-95) and 208 (Petersen 63, Davies 58, Miles 4-58) by 91 runs
Scorecard

Away Championship wins are a rare treat for Gloucestershire fans. Back-to-back away wins are rarer than rocking horse dung and has the Jessop Tavern View pondering where this rich vein of championship form has come from. The easiest conclusion was to look to the impact of assistant coach Ian Harvey. Harv was legendary for his refuelling exploits (who can forget the time when Craig Spearman had to act as his driver after a drink-driving ban) and the Tavern wholeheartedly approves of any oversight he may have had on the team's hydration regime.

This being 2015 of course, we suspect Harv's impact may simply consisted of adding a different sachet to the latest energy drink swilled by the bowlers between overs. Whatever it was, it has worked an absolute treat as the boys romped to a convincing victory over league leaders Lancashire.

The match went about as well as coach Richard Dawson could have hoped. Glos batted first and scored almost 400 on first innings, with Chris Dent again impressing with 116 and O'Mish and Tavarare ably supporting him with 50s. We then managed to bowl out Lancashire's high-powered batting lineup for a slim first innings lead of 24. Liam Norwell again excelled with 4-95, while Craig Miles managed 3-71 while maintaining an excellent economy rate of under 3 an over. This was fine bowling effort in an innings anchored by Paul Horton's 168.

Glos encountered a spot of bother in the second innings, falling to 76-3 with a lead of just 100, before Kiwi Irishman O'Mish and Aussie Brit Handscomb came together for a match-defining partnership of 134 which took the Shire to a handy lead of 230, before a final day collapse left Lancashire 300 to win in a minimum of 70 overs.

A superb start by the bowlers reduced Lancashire to 22-4, but we then had to deal with a couple of minor scares as Petersen and Alex Davies put on 100 for the 5th wickets before falling either side of tea. Lancashire managed some lusty blows off Tom Smith, who took some serious tap in the second innings (8-0-71-0!) to get the target under 100, but when Clark and Buck departed in quick succession it was only a matter of time. The wild scenes of celebration when Miles takes the final wicket in the video below shows how much this win meant to the boys.

A superb result and one which, amazingly, takes the Shire to second in the table after 4 matches heading into the first T20 games at the weekend. A home game against strugglers Kent follows on Monday. If the boys can continue the momentum from two excellent away wins, we could be in the dreamland of chasing promotion come mid-season.

Promotion, you say? Well, a blog named after a former drinking establishment at Nevil Road can hardly be criticised for ideas that could well be seen as having been conceived while under the influence of something a little stronger than one of Harv's energy drinks.

Match highlights below:

Day 4

Day 3

Day 2

Day 1

Ed Young to the rescue

Gloucestershire 222 (Gidman 110, Kerrigan 5-68) and 173 for 9 drew with Lancashire 310 (Katich 96, Miles 6-88) and 270 (Prince 64, Croft 64, McCarter 4-95) 

The Jessop Tavern View admits it has some previous when it comes to Ed Young. We've frequently been critical of his 'bowling' and queried whether he is worth his place in the team, given his average of 70. The answer to this is 'no'. However, his brave resistance with the bat yesterday, batting for 6 odd overs despite a wrist injury sustained earlier in the match, proved he does have some value to the 'Shire.

Gloucestershire were set an unlikely 358 to win, after Lancashire extended their innings for a few overs at the start of the day, taking their lead to over 350. Once batting again, we swiftly lost Chris Dent, whose inability to stick around when circumstances require circumspection are a worrying trend. Given his obvious talent, King John should be having a word.

Corporal Klinger didn't last a lot longer, either, falling on the stroke of lunch to the handy Kerrigan. While he scored more than 10 today, he does already seem a rather binary player, lacking the consistent plundering which marks out a true Div 2 overseas mercenary. Housego didn't last much longer himself and it was thus left to old stagers, Gidders and O'Mish to bat for 29 overs while putting on 54. It was pleasing to see Gidman scores runs in the second innings, as given his first innings ton, we had predicted a single figure score second tine around. Once he departed, trapped LBW by non-overseas South African, Andrea Agathangelou, Benny Howell arrived and curbed his natural attacking instincts in another time-consuming partnership with Marshall. Hamish did surprisingly well in this knock, ultimately batting 204 balls for his 44.

Glos lost 4 late wickets to pile on the pressure, but McCarter and Young survived until the final over, leaving Liam Norwell to safely navigate the final delivery of the match. A creditable performance, given our mounting injury list among the bowling attack. 18 year old Craig Miles is looking more and more impressive with every match. We even heard rumours that the England Lions were running an eye over him. That's all we need, one of our few fit, decent quality bowlers getting called up. Yes, we know that's a parochial thing to say, but hey, we are proudly one-eyed west country folk here at the Jessop Tavern View.

A final word of credit must go to Glenn Chapple. 900 wickets is not an easy thing to come by and is testament to his skill, fitness and durability over a long career. His post-landmark comments were typically self-effacing and mostly focused on him just playing for a long time. However, to paraphrase 'Sir' Geoffrey Boycott, he must have bowled some good deliveries along the way, else all the batting was rubbish.

Video highlights from Day 4 below:

Gidders to the rescue

Day 2: Lancs 310 v Glos 143 -4.

An intriguing poised game continued to see-saw its way between the rain clouds and leave Glos with a fighting chance of still getting something from the match.

It was a day of contrasts as 39 year old Glenn Chapple bagged his 900th first class wicket and 18 year old Gloucestershire paceman Craig Miles took career best figures of 6 for 88. Even more impressive for Miles is the fact that this is the third match in a row in which he has taken career best figures, following up his 4 for 83 against Hampshire, and 6 for 99 against Worcestershire. Whilst these figures are clearly impressive for a young bowler, lets not forget that both Liam Norwell and David Payne took wickets when bursting on to the scene. Norwell and Payne both seemed to have regressed this season and it is to be hoped that Miles can continue to take wickets when teams more familiar with facing him.

After losing an hour to rain in the morning, Gloucestershire did everything that could be asked of them. 5 quick wickets left Lancashire reeling on 244 for 9 only for numbers 10 and 11 to put on 66 for the last wicket. In the context of this match that final wicket partnership could well turn out to be a decisive one. I guess we shouldn't blame Gloucester's young bowling attack too much, but having worked so hard to put themselves in a good position they did seem to throw it away too easily by spraying it around to the tail enders.

In reply Glos were very quickly in the mire. Captain Klingon became Chapples 900th victim, Dent lazily left a ball that thudded into his pads to chalk up yet another dismissal that speaks more about his lack of concentration than his lack of technique. The House slashed at a ball that was too close to his body to cut and O'Mish was strangled down the legside. At 66 for 4 at least we were thinking that Lancashire's final wicket partnership wasn't quite as key as we first thought.

But then cometh the hour, cometh the Gidders. Standing tall, and lumbering forward Gidders and Benny managed to steady the ship and set sail for an inevitable early morning collapse on day 3. We do pity the poor buggers who have to write summaries for all the county championship matches day in day out, but we think they were really stretching it when they whimsically muttered that it is easy to imagine how much Gidman could have achieved in the game were it not for injury. Whilst Gidders has always been susceptible to niggling little injuries, we can't think of any major periods when he was out of the side. The Jessop Tavern does have a slightly soft spot for Gidman mainly, we suspect, because he represents everything that we love about Gloucestershire. For the most part Gidman is maddeningly inconsistent, frequently getting himself in, then even more frequently getting himself out. Yet he always offers you those glimpses of talent. Those moments that make you think, maybe now he will kick on and dominate teams on a weekly basis. Gidman hasn't passed 1000 runs in a season since 2009. He has 2 hundreds since that same year. 2009 was also Gidman's first season as captain. Unfulfilled potential. Probably not. He's probably achieved everything we could realistically have expected.

Still, we are happy to re-write this if he makes a big ton today. And speaking of tons, whilst it's been nice to see Benny cementing himself at number 6 (and bizarrely becoming a handy bowler) it's about time he hit a first class hundred.

Concentrate on the championship boys

CB40: Lancashire beat Gloucestershire by 4 wickets.


The Jessop Tavern view probably won't be going to Lord's this year after Lancashire scraped a hard fought victory on monday night. On what was frankly a piss poor pitch that looked more like a slab of hard worn concrete Glos managed to set a competitive 184 primarily due to Ian Cockbain flogging 20 from the final over of the innings. However, such a total really required Gidders and the boys to take regular wickets in order to keep Lancashire on the back foot, and sadly a partnership of 82 for the fourth Lancashire wicket did the damage to Gloucestershire's CB40 campaign.

King John decided to roll the selectorial dice and came up with a batting heavy lineup that included seven batsmen, three bowlers and a Jon Batty. In fairness the pitch was crap and turned from the start and thus the seven batsmen also included part time spinners Rob Nicol and Chris Dent who both bowled a full complement of 8 rather tidy overs. However, neither took a wicket, which on a turning wicket proved to be the difference. Gloucestershire also weren't helped by an indifferent performance from Ed Young who really struggled to find either line or length whilst going for over 5 an over. Ed Young had a very solid t20 campaign by being able to fire his darts into the batsman's pads. However, it would appear that when he is asked to do more than this he really doesn't have the control at the moment. Time to give Jack Taylor ago we reckon.

It seemed strange that captain Gidders used only the minimum 5 bowlers and didn't decide to give either himself or Benny a bowl. Considering Ed Young's struggles, and the fact that Nicol and Dent looked about as threatening as the Jessop Tavern's own slow left armers, surely a case could have been made for the skipper wobbling down a few seamers on an uneven track. Ah, hindsight....

The defeat now leaves Glos third in the table on 11 points, a point behind both Lancashire and Middlesex, with the former still having two games in hand. With only two games left for Glos the odds are now steeped against them. The remaining fixtures are home against Lancashire and then away against Leicestershire. It will pretty much be a case of having to win both those games and then pray. Who wanted to go to a Lord's final in mid September anyway!