Gloucestershire Win the Hard Way… Again, But Still
Get Upstaged
September 20th
2015
There is
a school of thought that believes that a low-scoring limited-overs match is far
more thrilling than one where a side chases down 350. There is a lot to say for
this point of view: when things are not loaded in favour of the bat, when the
best field is not one that had four men in close catching positions in the
second tier of the stands, when every ball is a drama – a dot, a scrambled leg
bye, an edge to the boundary, a wicket – when scoring a run a ball looks like a
mountain to climb, you get real heroes. Every player on the field knows that
his intervention may be critical: a diving stop may save a vital run; a ball in
the block hole will be defended and not thumped on the half volley to the
boundary; and the batsman knows that his skill and nerve will be tested to the
limit. Everyone has heard the maxim “his 50 was worth a century another day”;
yesterday Geraint Jones, the oldest of the Gloucestershire trio of old hands,
showed what it meant. It was a day for cool heads and pragmatic batting
appreciating the value of hard-earned runs.
It was also
a game that illustrated the plight of the unloved 50-over game in England and
Wales. A Lord’s Final has not been a sell-out for many years. The Semi-Final at
The Oval was, according to reports, watched by just a few hundred die-hards.
For the Final, the Home of Cricket left one stand unopened and, when Michael
Klinger fell, the ground was no more than two-thirds full. And this with a
London side playing one of the counties that has the biggest contingent of
travelling fans in the Final. The ECB has killed this competition as a
spectator event.
Gloucestershire
were very much the underdog, lost the Toss and their captain and talisman to
only the third ball of the morning. You know that a 1030 start at Lord’s in
September means that there is a real danger of being 30-3 from the first 10
overs. Gloucestershire are also a side that would much rather chase anyway.
Everything seemed to say that this was just one game to many for a young side
in which the sum is very much greater than the individual parts. As the side
struggled, losing a wicket just as it seemed to be beginning to recover from
the last. 100-3 promised a total around 270-280; 108-5 just two overs later
threatened a quick finish. Surrey fans must have been licking their lips at the
prospect of getting home early from the game. One says “Surrey fans” because
there must have been some in the ground, but the noise and the singing seemed
to be exclusively carried out in broad West-country accents.
Gloucestershire
though have been in this position time and again in the competition and have
won through. When Maxi Klinger fell early it was, in a way, the best possible
thing that could happen to the side because it meant that there could be no
jeering that the team was a one man band if they won. You knew, instinctively,
that someone else would step up. As Gloucestershire tried to get up to around
240, GO Jones, still a very determined batsman in a crisis, held up an end
while Jack Taylor attacked at the other.
Still
there were twists, many twists. Seeing how hard it was to lift the scoring
rate, you thought of Gloucestershire’s spinners and bowlers like Benny Howell
and how hard they would make it to get the ball away. Benny Howell is the archetypal
county pro: the thought of him playing international cricket is just absurd. He
will not score big First Class centuries or intimidate batsmen, but put him in
a limited-overs match situation and he will influence the game more often than
not with a quick 30 when acceleration is required, or with a mean spell of 3-25
when needed, as batsmen try to take him on and come off second best. Bob Hunt
up in the Radio Bristol commentary box with the former Gloucestershire seamer,
Mike Smith, called it quickly when he said that that it would not be a day for
a score of 300. There was a feeling that 240 would not be easy to chase and 270
a winning score.
The
average English cricket fan regards Jade Dernbach with some derision. That
sells him short. His England record is far better than he is usually given
credit for. Dernbach lost his way in an England set-up that could not cope with
the short formats and tried too many variations because he thought that he had
to, rather than doing what he does best – bowl straight at a good clip – and use
the variations only occasionally for surprise effect. Having got rid of both
openers, he cut the innings short with four wickets including a hat-trick.
Admittedly it was a rum hat-trick with the unfortunate David Payne ducking a beamer
that followed him and receiving a painful blow in the ribs, only to be given
out LBW despite the ball going well down leg. Figures of 6-35 in a Lord’s Final
show why the selectors persisted with him for so long.
A score
of 220 was disappointing, but not a complete disaster. If Surrey got the sort
of start that Jason Roy is capable of giving, the match could be almost over in
10 overs, but a couple of early wickets could lead to a slow strangle. It is
the sort of situation where James Fuller’s biorhythms are key: no bowler had
more dot balls in the T20, nor more overs that went for 20+. Fuller though
showed why he could, one day, interest the England selectors. He is fast. He
can be nasty. And when the mood takes him he is a very dangerous bowler in
limited-overs cricket. And he removed both openers. At 42-2 from 12 overs the
contest was open, but Surrey remained just in front. Even though the over
comparison showed Gloucestershire ahead most of the time, Surrey were consistently
well ahead on Duckworth-Lewis. While you felt that Gloucestershire always had a
wicket too many down, Surrey always seemed to be a wicket to the good.
However, Sangakkara
and Burns were struggling to score. The middle overs were applying the
strangle, but then, scoring at even 3 an over was not really an issue provided
that wickets did not fall. At 143-2 even the most optimistic of Gloucestershire
fans was just beginning to doubt, but you knew that a wicket would change everything.
Sub Will Tavaré came on and held a vital catch that Sangakkara offered from
Jack Tayor and the crowd was singing louder than ever: they knew that, suddenly,
whatever the Sky predictor said, the match had changed. When, soon after, Rory
Burns danced out, swung, missed and Roderick did the necessary, it looked as if
the pressure had got to hm. Two new batsmen at the crease, the run rate
required edging up towards a run a ball, each dot ball a tightening of the
noose.
Gary
Wilson fell cheaply, but still Surrey were at least one wicket to the good. Then
Azhar Mahmood and Tom Curran fell quickly. 192-7. 27 balls left. 29 to get. For
the first time you knew that Gloucestershire were going to win unless someone
in the Surrey side was heroic. Even then Surrey should, by all logic, have won:
7 needed from 7 balls, three wickets left – you would back the side batting 99
times out of 100. James Burke is a little lazy going for a tight run. Misfield
by Phil Dent. Gareth Roderick stretches. No dive. All gifts gratefully… but
still, six balls to go, two wickets left, a set batsman on strike. It only
takes an edge to Third Man to settle it. Sam Curran goes for glory and the ball
drops down Benny Howell’s throat. The batsmen have crossed. Gareth Barry
averages 20.6 with the bat in Tests and 24 in First Class cricket. He only
needs to get bat on ball and run, but he too panics and tries to win it with
one shot. Ball in the air straight to Jack Taylor on the mid-wicket boundary and,
despite having the stand-out performances of the match with bat and ball,
Surrey have self-destructed to a barely believable defeat as the crowd sings “Gloucestershire-la-la-la”
at the top of its lungs, as it did in the great years of the 1970s.
How on
earth did that happen?
Some
people have tried to dismiss it as an undeserved, freak win, but it is
happening too often to Gloucestershire for that. Calm captaincy, tight bowling under
pressure and an ability to eke out runs from the tail have been the keys, with
a team short of stars all supporting each other. Maybe it is just a one-off but
it could not have been a better send-off for such an under-rated player as GO
Jones who answered Gloucestershire’s SOS in 2014. And it is reward for Maxi Klinger who
was on the point of not coming back in 2015 because he felt that Gloucestershire were
not progressing as he had hoped, but who had enough faith to make the longest
commute to work in the world to help out his adopted team.
Now, the
task for Gloucestershire is to push on from here next season.
Even
then, the news was not of Gloucestershire because, not far away on the South
Coast, something utterly stunning was happening on a rugby field and, within a
couple of hours Gloucestershire’s amazing win had been totally upstaged by Japan's rugby team.
That’s
Life!!
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