Glos lose opening match of a competition that seems to begger belief in its lack of any structure

T20 Blast: Sussex 242 for 5 (Taylor 93*) beat Gloucestershire 83 for 1 (Klinger 42*) by 1 run (D/L method) 
Scorecard
Gloucestershire were cruelly denied in their opening T20 Blast match against Sussex as rain brought to a halt a potentially thrilling run chase with Glos 1 run behind the Duckworth-Lewis target.

In fairness, after Sussex racked up 242 in their 20 overs, with Kiwi Ross Taylor butchering 93 from 48 deliveries, they were firm favourites to take the spoils. Chris Liddle marked his Glos debut with 2 uninspired overs that went for 35. David Payne also struggled going for 15 runs an over. Tom Smith and Jack Taylor kept some measure of control, but the tiny boundary on one side made boundary hitting only a mistimed, toe of the bat prod away.

The good news for Glos was that Michael Klinger looks to still be batting like it's 2015. His 42 runs came off only 24 balls and you suspect that with him still at the crease Sussex would have been delighted by the rain.

And so Glos get off to a losing start, albeit in entertaining and dynamic fashion.It is now back to 4 day cricket for the next few weeks. The less said about this the better.

Actually, no. What is the point of having a cricket blog if you can't moan about absurdities. The T20 Blast should be English cricket's premier way of attracting new fans to the domestic game, and in turn creating a strong grassroots infrastructure to feed into the national team. England have just enjoyed a fantastic last 12 months of one day cricket, culminating in a hugely exciting and newsworthy loss in the final of the World T20 just a few weeks ago.

So therefore why do we have the T20 Blast being launched during an England test match? In May. With only 1 England player from the World T20 final on display over the opening weekend. With the IPL still blazing away in India. And with many teams playing their opening match of the competition and then going immediately back to 4 day cricket for 2 weeks. How is any of this conducive to putting together an exciting competition that captures a little bit of the excitement of other far more successful competitions around the world?

The T20 Blast will likely never become as big an event as say the Big Blast until the bullet is finally bitten and city franchises are created. But couldn't we at least try? Why couldn't we ring fence a period in the summer for the competition? Why couldn't we do this in July and August when the weather is better and kids are on holiday, along with the IPL having finished.

Would it be too hard to make sure that the England boys are also partially available, particularly at the start of the competition in order to attract attention? The test team contains only 4 of the lads who played in the World T20 final. It always feels like such a wasted opportunity. Every year. Oh well.

Video highlights

T20 roundup: Maxi(mum) Klinger and not much else = top of the league

The Jessop Tavern View is going to argue that this T20 recap has been justifiably delayed by the Shire's trademark inconsistency in the tournament so far. That or laziness. A great start against Middlesex was followed by a narrow loss to Sussex before a comfortable win against Essex made it two wins out of three.

Since then we've played four more games, winning two, leaving the boys handily placed at the top of the south group after 7 games. This hides a slightly concerning over-reliance on Maxy Klinger, whose remarkable run of T20 batting form reached new heights with a 69 not out, followed by back-to-back hundreds on consecutive days. Sadly both of these came in losing causes, against Essex away then Glamorgan at home, but still took him to the ludicrous tally of 403 runs without dismissal in this year's competition. A failure yesterday against Middlesex finally enabled him to achieve a tasty average of 413 in just 5 matches, with three hundreds already.

We note (thanks to the excellent Cricket Archive) that these tons take him into equal third on the all time domestic T20 hundreds list, alongside David Warner on 5 and behind only Brendon McCullum and the great Chris Gayle (a surely unbeatable 15!)

These are outstanding figures and it's a testament to the form shown by a man who also scored a hundred in one of his two championship matches since arriving from Australia. The benefits of an extended off-season after the Australian domestic season are clear for all to see.

Gloucestershire 157 for 1 (Klinger 69*, Cockbain 54*) beat Kent 156 for 6 (Bell-Drummond 31, Howell 3-18) by nine wickets
Scorecard

First up were Kent at run-friendly out ground Beckenham. Kent were restricted to 156 by a parsimonious spell from Benny the Frenchman, including dismissing in-form Sam Northeast for just 14. The result was never really in doubt once Klinger and O'Mish got cracking, putting on 60 for the first wicket, before Hamish was bowled having struck a six the previous delivery. This brought Ian Cockbain to the wicket and an unbeaten partnership of 97 allowed the boys to cruise to an easy victory with Klinger ending 69*.

Video highlights below:

Essex 181 (Pettini 68, Smith 3-26) beat Gloucestershire 163 for 7 (Klinger 104*, Napier 3-30) by 18 runs
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The return fixture against Essex didn't go so well. The bowlers restricted a fast-improving Essex side to 181 all out, having been 98 for 1 after 10 overs. Tom Smith took 3-26 and got rid of dangermen Tom Westley and Bopara, while Fuller and Payne chipped in with two wickets each in economical spells. The problems started while batting, as a series of failures left Klinger the last man standing. Aside from Klinger, only James Fuller passed 20 and the fact that their 8th wicket stand of 71 was comfortably the highest of our innings tells the story. Klinger completed his second consecutive T20 hundred against Essex with a six off Shaun Tait, but truth be told we were never close to reaching our target. A disappointing loss, this. 181 was not a huge target at Chelmsford and the batsmen let down a decent bowling effort.

Video high lowlights of the Glos innings below

Glamorgan 191 for 3 (Rudolph 101*, Howell 2-24) beat Gloucestershire 172 for 6 (Klinger 104*) by 19 runs 
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Another day, another unbeaten hundred for the skipper, but another bloody defeat for the 'Shire. Not a lot to write about this, other than this time we let Glamorgan score a healthy 191 which was always going to prove a challenging chase in increasingly dark and wet conditions down at Nevil Road. Jacques Rudolph carried his bat for the first T20 hundred of his career and his dominance was shown by the next highest score being Colin Ingram's 28.

Glamorgan then executed an exemplary bowling and fielding effort, with only Klinger able to make batting look easy. We were never really in the contest after slumping to 90 for 4 in the 13th over and changing the batting order to bring in the sloggers early didn't really help matters. That said, Klinger stuck around while continuing to blast the ball to all parts and you can't help but think the chase would have been easier had anyone else been able to keep him company for more than a few overs at a time.

Gloucestershire 214 for 4 (Cockbain 75, Howell 57) beat Middlesex 171 (Simpson 74, Payne 5-24) by 43 runs
Scorecard

So, to yesterday's match at Old Deer Park in Richmond. Luckily Middlesex aren't very good at T20 and have actually not beaten the 'Shire in 8 attempts. This proud record continued, as the rest of the boys finally realised that Klinger can't continue to score almost 60% of the side's runs and upped their game accordingly. Ian Cockbain returned to some T20 nick with a commanding 75, including 6 sixes, and Monsieur Benny managed a T20-best 57. Cymbals even had an enjoyable thrash at the end in making an unbeaten 34, as Glos ran up an excellent total of 214 for 5.

As with so many T20 matches, losing early wickets when chasing a big target quickly signifies 'game over man'. Once Miles dismissed Paul Stirling for 13, it was left to David Payne to clean up with an excellent 5-24. His haul included John Simpson, one of the few Middlesex batsmen to show signs of life with 74, and were the best so far in this season's NatWest Blast.

Glos 'blast' to victory against Middlesex

Gloucestershire 113 for 5 beat Middlesex 111 for 8 (Norwell 3-27, Fuller 3-29) by five wickets

The Jessop Tavern View can always be counted on to talk up any Glos victory. As such, we're delighted to report that Glos eased to a five wicket victory in our home t20 Blast opener on Friday. However, having watched Middlesex put in two terrible performances in a televised double-header at Lords last Saturday, we have to say that the win wasn't unexpected.

Last week, we bemoaned the lack of batting firepower in the Glos side. Our concerns remain, despite this comfortable win. Maxi Klinger again fell cheaply and badly needs a score to kick start his season. Losing 5 wickets in chasing just 112 for victory indicates a fairly mediocre standard of cricket being played by both sides.

Perhaps the more exciting news of the past few days is the loan signing of Geraint 'Irongloves' Jones as cover for the fragile digits of Gareth Roderick. This is an intriguing, if stopgap measure, designed to relieve some of the pressure on youngster Cam Herring while Roderick is unavailable for the next 6 weeks.

Jones has lost his place as Kent's keeper to youngster Sam Billings, after 13 seasons wearing the gloves. He's clearly past his best, but hopefully not in a Jon Batty kind of way and he surely can't do too much harm in 4 weeks. King John has indicated that he will be asked to mentor Herring,who is already a very good keeper from what we've seen, but less assured with the bat at this early stage of his career.

Jones is straight into the squad for today's LVCC match at Derby, which has thus far been delayed by rain and begins a 12 day stretch of matches on the road, including Derbyshire and Leicestershire in the championship and 220 Blasts v Kent and Sussex. Jones will be unable to feature against his parent club Kent, which might prove a good opportunity to assess whether he has passed on anything positive to young Herring. We're hoping he sticks to offering batting advice, rather than explaining how he managed to do this last season.

Match highlights:

Gidman and Fuller tear through Kent….and then Glos don't mess it up!

Gloucestershire 252 and 212 - 4 v Kent 114.

Going into this match Gloucestershire's season was dangerously close to coming off the rails. Lying joint bottom of Division 2 and with minus points in the t20 'Blast' another defeat would have have seen us clamouring for the return of Jon Batty. Fortunately we won't need to resort to that.

Having won the toss on day 1 Glos limped to a seemingly disappointing 252 all out with only the returning Gareth Roderick making any real contribution. However then the fun began.

Before the season began it appeared fairly obvious that Gloucestershire's weakest suit lay very much in their batting, fielding, bowling unit. With only Will Gidman of guaranteed quality we were heavily reliant on the sticky tape holding Ian Saxelby together lasting a full season and on Craig Miles being able to replicate last seasons impressive introduction to first class cricket. As it has transpired Miles is yet to take the field and Saxelby wishes he hadn't. Whilst Gidman has continued to impress (18 wickets at 13) opposition teams have figured out that if they blunt Gidman then Glos have very little to offer, well, little to offer other than a succession of four balls with which to help yourself.

Thus, going into this match it was hardly comforting to see Benny Howell being drafted in to do the job as a fourth seamer. We like Benny a lot as a Frenchman and as a cricketer, but when your side is struggling to take wickets do you really want to pick a batting all rounder? It didn't strike us as the most aggressive of selections. Clearly though King John is a wiser man than we, and he had clearly poured over hours of tape of Kent's batsmen and decided that we didn't really need any bowlers and that even James Fuller would take wickets. What an astute man.

For a while this morning it appeared that Glos fancied throwing away their overnight position of having reduced Kent to 33 for 6. English youngsters Sam Billings and Adam Ball serenely took Kent passed the follow-on before Kent combusted again to lose their final 3 wickets for 13 runs. Gidman taking 4 for 14 from 12 overs and Fuller capturing 4 for 32. Whilst Gidman's economy is helped by the fact that runs come freely at the other end he has now consistently taken wickets for 3 and a bit seasons, and scored runs. It would be interesting to know whether he does figure in a Peter Moore's powerpoint presentation. We suspect not, but how close he is would be interesting to know.

Fuller on the other hand continues to flatter to deceive. One day good, one day going for 38 an over. He is the sort of cricketer who we love to watch as something is always happening when he is on a cricket field. Be that taking wickets, biffing runs, getting destroyed by Scott Stryis or deliberately bowling beamers. He is the Jessop Tavern's sort of cricketer.

In reply Glos looked to be making a hash of it 58 for 3, with captain Klinger again failing to make a mark. But cometh the hour and cometh the Gidman, Alex this time. Gidman and O'Mish proceeded to do what wise old timers are suppose to do in the middle order and calmly constructed what should be a match deciding partnership of 135.

With two days to go surely Glos cannot lose from here. The question will be how big a lead we need and how long we feel our bowlers need to take 10 wickets. We'd like to see a mid afternoon declaration giving us 4 and a half sessions. The weather may also play its part so Glos would be encouraged to get on with it.