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Victory hopes blitzed by Jarvis

10 June 2015

Day 4 :

An explosive afternoon session saw Lancashire rip through the Gloucestershire middle order and complete a 91 run victory half an hour before tea on the final day at the Bristol County Ground. From 113-2 at one stage, Gloucestershire lost their last eight wickets for only 47 runs.

Chasing 252, the pursuit was over when Faulkner held a steepling catch to dismiss Craig Miles off Jordan Clark for 17. It was a session out of context with the rest of the match.

Listen to skipper Geraint Jones' views on the final day here :

The rapid unravelling of Gloucestershire's second innings after lunch belied what had gone before. Dent and Klinger had set out to build - painstakingly - a platform for victory. Dent only had one scoring shot in the first 45 minutes, and Klinger's patience meant he was dealing almost exclusively in boundaries.

He struck half a dozen in all, including a couple punched straight off Chapple, in between some running repairs for his bat. Twice tape was applied rather than swap it for another model, but having got to 42, Faulkner, coming round the wicket, found the faintest of edges and this time Davies held the catch.

The pair had put on 68, and the Australian's departure appeared to loosen the shackles for Dent. He too picked up sucessive boundaries off Chapple, and having began the session so slowly, by lunch the left hander was on the cusp of a valuable half century. 78 runs had been added in the session, and 148 were still required.

The second ball after the resumption - Dent's 147th - saw him reach fifty after more than three hours at the crease. Lancashire had returned to their opening attack of Bailey and Jarvis, and they were to haul the game Lancashire's way in dramatically short order.

Jarvis first dislodged Dent for 54, caught by Ashwell Prince at short cover, and the Zimbabwean went on to produce a match winning spell of 4-16 with the simple virtues of bowling full and straight. Cockbain and Howell were both lbw, the latter without scoring, and when he bowled Jack Taylor second ball, also for nought, five wickets had gone down for six runs in 30 balls.

The other one was Gareth Roderick, who never looked comfortable and was also trapped lbw, in his case by Tom Bailey. Geraint Jones confirmed afterwards that Roderick had batted despite a small fracture in his thumb. He's not expected to play again until the Cheltenham Festival.

Any hope of victory from that point rested with Jones and Craig Miles. They added 35 before Jones gave Davies his second catch of the innings off Faulkner, and the same combination accounted for Matt Taylor. When Miles was last out, the surprise was how swift the demise had been.

In the three home Championship matches, at no stage in any of them had been such a clatter of wickets in quick succession. Perhaps it said as much about the quality of the Lancashire attack - and their record of of only one defeat in their 14 Championship away games - as anything else.

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