Gloucestershire (H)

[nat]

It 's like Marchant De Lange is playing in his back garden. Love him. Box office.

[dazedpenguin]

Fantastic innings by Das. Great to watch.

[Gilders]

Good to get over the line in the end. 

Too many wickets given away from unnecessary big shots late in the innings when we were already well up on run rate and the only way we could lose was being bowled out.

But a win is a win.

Is Pepper injured and if so, does it look short or long term?

Assume Lawrence absence was because he is in the England squad?  Does he get released and become immediately available if he is left out of the starting XI by England or does he have to stay with them and carry drinks?

[dazedpenguin]

Westley in the finisher role could work well this season. Last season Essex would probably have lost that. Interesting to see who drops out with Lawrence and Pepper back.

Pepper was left out as a precaution apparently, so I think it's short term.

I guess they'll keep Lawrence with the squad until Thursday and then let him go. It'll probably be some Middlesex or Lord's ground staff players doing the 12th man duties. So he should be available for the Sussex game on Thursday.

[SirChef26]

Westley in the finisher role could work well this season. Last season Essex would probably have lost that. Interesting to see who drops out with Lawrence and Pepper back.

I was getting annoyed at Westley initially because him scratching around was putting pressure on us and Gloucs were getting right back into it. But he had the 15th over to compose himself at the non strikers end, then took 16 of the 16th over, which effectively won us the match.

Bar the wickets, that was a well-managed chase to be fair. We got ahead of the rate early on and never let it slip. Not at any point did we need 10 an over, which is impressive when chasing a score just south of 200. Das rode his luck at times and needs to develop some more muscle in order to start hitting those short balls from the spinners for six. But a good knock.

[bwildered]

 On the pitch a wins a win.
 
But when the non members pay wall is in place, refunds would be required. Big countdown twice and no pics with eventually constant rebuffering and out of focus stream . A unimpressive production due to hard/software problems.

[dazedpenguin]

It was shockingly poor. I know the funds aren't there to compete with the quality of streams that some other counties can offer, but they could save some money by just taking the BBC audio stream, as with the county championship stream, rather than trying to provide separate commentary. If it's going to end up behind a paywall, then it does need to be a lot better quality- and more reliable.

[mawallace]

It was shockingly poor. I know the funds aren't there to compete with the quality of streams that some other counties can offer, but they could save some money by just taking the BBC audio stream, as with the county championship stream, rather than trying to provide separate commentary. If it's going to end up behind a paywall, then it needs to be a lot better quality- and more reliable.

Just as play started last night parts of the ground suffered a power outage. This meant that the entire site's internet and computer network crashed and had to be rebooted. It also meant that the electronic ticket system did not work, the bars etc could not take credit cards etc etc.

I think it was about 20 mins before they could start things up again. Meanwhile, we had play with no scoreboard. It was good to hear Tony manually announce the scores at the end of each over though .

EVen when the scoreboard came up it was slow. I noticed during the Essex innings there was someone (I think it was the third umpire) operating a manual scoreboard and updating it at the end of every delviaery - bit like the Colchester days.

[mawallace]

Westley in the finisher role could work well this season. Last season Essex would probably have lost that. Interesting to see who drops out with Lawrence and Pepper back.

Pepper was left out as a precaution apparently, so I think it's short term.

I guess they'll keep Lawrence with the squad until Thursday and then let him go. It'll probably be some Middlesex or Lord's ground staff players doing the 12th man duties. So he should be available for the Sussex game on Thursday.

It was a good win and a good match. But the opposition's fielding was awful.  11 extras and several missed catches - including two which were knocked into the boundary