Match Preview - Gloucestershire v Sussex
4 May 2019
Gloucestershire head to Eastbourne to play Sussex on Sunday (11.00am) looking for a run up the rails in the South Group of the Royal London One-Day Cup to have a chance of making the play off stage next Friday.
Five teams - including Gloucestershire - at this stage retain an interest in qualification but head coach Richard Dawson knows only two wins will do at the end of what has been a relentless schedule over the last three weeks.
"We trained on Friday and talked about the need to play two very good games" he said. "Each of the three wins has been followed by a loss so it's not that we can't do it. Wins come from setting the innings up well and bowling to your plans, which is what opposition have done to us when we've lost. We've got two more opportunities now to nail that down."
Gloucestershire played at the Saffrons two years ago in this competition, winning by 6 wickets with half centuries from Michael Klinger, George Hankins and Matt Taylor. Seven of that team are in the squad for Sunday's match.
Squad:
Dent (c), Roderick, Hammond, Howell, Bracey, van Buuren, J.Taylor, Higgins, Smith, Payne, Liddle, G.Hankins, M.Taylor.
One of the features of the competition has been the volume of runs scored by batsmen in the middle order. At Lord's Gloucestershire couldn't split Middlesex pair Stephen Eskinazi and Nick Gubbins, and on Thursday David Wiese (171) and Ben Brown (64) almost saw Sussex to victory against Hampshire having added 232 for the 6th wicket.
"We've found it's hard to contain the scoring if you don't get wickets early in those middle overs with the fielding restrictions and a softer ball" Dawson added. "Partnerships have developed across the tournament and Wiese and Brown is the most recent example.
England have done well in 50 over cricket because at international level they have bowlers with different skills bowling those overs and that's what counties are trying to replicate."
Glamorgan's victory at Bristol on Tuesday keeps them in the play off mix because of their remaining opponents, although like Gloucestershire they are looking for others to falter but rather than look at the mathematical equation too closely, head coach Richard Dawson is focussing on performance first.
"We've chatted about solutions to the problems we've had and how we should respond to them" he concluded. "Against Glamorgan Cooke and Root played well, put us under pressure and we were a bit slow to react and by the time we did they'd had five or six overs where they had taken the game their way. We didn't play to the standard we had done in the three home wins."
"Eastbourne is an out ground but all the counties are used to playing on them so we'll have to adapt to it. The goal will be to do what we set out to do before the game actually starts."
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