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    Report : Perera pinches the points with last ball wicket

    3 August 2017

    Sri Lankan bowler Thisara Perera made his most significant impact so far in Gloucestershire colours as they won in the Nat West T20 Blast for the third year in a row at the Swalec Stadium against Glamorgan.

    With rain in the air, and Gloucestershire having made 150-9 in their 20 overs, the umpires discussed conditions after four overs of the Glamorgan reply. If they had gone off at that stage, the game would have been abandoned as a "no result", but the one further over saw Glamorgan take their score to 32-1 with one ball remaining.

    A dot ball at that stage with no more play would have meant a tie, but Perera yorked Glamorgan skipper Rudolph, thereby raising the DLS score after five overs to 37 and leaving Glamorgan on 32-2. The umpires took the players off, and despite several attempts to restart proceedings there was no more play, leaving Gloucestershire winners by 5 runs under DLS. The result lifts Gloucestershire to fourth in the South Group table.

    Gloucestershire made two changes from the side selected for the match at Essex which was abandoned after the toss, Benny Howell and Tom Smith coming in for Gareth Roderick and Chris Liddle, and it was Gloucestershire who were asked to bat after Jacques Rudolph won the toss.

    The start was solid enough from Klinger and Mustard, although the latter was dropped by Salter off Hogan at point in the second over. It was a hard chance, but as things turned out Gloucestershire were to be extremely grateful. Mustard played a shot similar to a golfer's sand wedge to strike the first six of the match off van der Gugten in the third over, and the openers shared boundaries off Hogan, de Lange and Wagg in adding 45 together in the powerplay.

    Unusually, the middle overs were split between only two Glamorgan bowlers, and it was Craig Meschede who was the stand breaker as Klinger (15) pulled a ball straight to Salter on the square leg boundary.

    The off spinner was on at the media centre end and with Mustard profitably using the reverse sweep against him, Gloucestershire had reached 73-1 at half distance and the former Durham wicketkeeper brought up his first fifty in the tournament this season from 42 balls when he lofted Salter for his third six well over the long on boundary.

    Ian Cockbain's support meant Gloucestershire looked well placed for a total of around 180 only for both to depart in successive overs after adding 53 for the second wicket, Cockbain (22) being caught at long off and Mustard (57) at deep mid wicket, the leg spin of Ingram again having an impact as it had done in the reverse fixture.

    It left Gloucestershire's middle order to raise the tempo from scratch, and Jack Taylor and Kieran Noema-Barnett took the scoreboard to 129-3 with three overs left, two of which - destructively - were bowled by Michael Hogan. The Australian took five wickets at a personal cost of only seven runs as the innings spluttered to its conclusion at 150-9, well short of what looked a competitive score even on a pitch Phil Mustard described later as "sticky."

    Gloucestershire could ill afford a loose start to the Glamorgan reply so three successive boundaries by Aneurin Donald in Matt Taylor's first over was hardly ideal. The difficulty in judging the pace of the pitch was soon illustrated however, as the same batsman fell to David Payne, Benny Howell taking the catch at short cover off a leading edge.

    Umbrellas were in evidence when Thisara Perera was brought into the attack, and the key point then became the length of the Glamorgan innings. Rudolph's boundary early in the fifth over put them level with the DLS score, but the single to exceed it never came and critically the South African's defences were breached by Perera's yorker off the last.

    With the weather worsening, the decision to suspend play after Perera's wicket had been critical and no further time in the middle left Gloucestershire, against the odds, heading back to the Brightside Ground with two points which keep alive their hopes of a quarter final place.

     

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