Angry Bracewell Slams Lack Of Strategy
26 July 2013
John Bracewell admitted to being “annoyed and disappointed” after Gloucestershire had slid to a nine-wicket defeat by arch-rivals Somerset in a one-sided Friends Life t20 game at Bristol.
A sell-out crowd of around 4,000 saw the hosts make a paltry 125 all out, having been invited to bat first, with only Hamish Marshall (33) and Chris Dent (29) making meaningful contributions.
Somerset raced to their target off just 16.1 overs as openers Craig Kieswetter and Chris Jones hit half-centuries.
Director of Cricket Bracewell described it as Gloucestershire’s “poorest decision-making performance of the season” and was particularly critical of the specialist batsmen.
He told this website: “We formulated a strategy before the game and then failed totally to comply with it. That is extremely frustrating for any coach.
“Somerset are predictable in the way they approach their T20 cricket. They come hard at you with the ball early on and then can be very effective at the death when up against lower order players.
“The one thing you have to do is keep wickets in hand. We showed in the corresponding match at Taunton recently that if you have good batsmen left at the end of your innings you can put them under pressure.
“This time we exposed our middle order too soon and paid the penalty. We never got to a point where we could attack them in the closing stages.
“One or more of our batsmen has to get to the death in these games. It is as simple as that. You cannot get a competitive score by sending in bowlers to do a batsman’s job.
“Our score was well below par. We have to stop living in dreamland in terms of going in expecting to make 180.
“In certain games you have to build to get that sort of total. This team in particular are a foundation-building team and we emphasised that at the beginning of the day.
“I’m more annoyed at the end of this game than any other one we have played in the competition. Sometimes we haven’t had the tools to compete on some of the wickets we have played on, especially being deprived of a couple of spinners, but there was no excuse this evening.
“I’m angry today because our tactics were inept and our application to them was even worse. Those are things that really rub me up the wrong way.”
James Fuller missed the match with a foot injury and is also likely to miss the final Midlands/Wales/West Division match against Glamorgan at Cardiff on Tuesday night.
For more details on the Somerset game click on Cricket and then Match Reports.
