On this day

posted by John Winn

Travelling conditions this morning are atrocious enough to convince me that a day at The Riverside today, now matter how intriguingly poised Durham's match with Middlesex might be, should be forgotten. With the decks at home cleared yesterday to make way for the trip today time is available for a posting recalling a match attended sixteen years ago at Archdeacon Meadow, Gloucester when Gloucestershire took on visitors Essex.

Gloucestershire have played on a number of grounds within the city of Gloucester, the first being Spa Ground where they played first class cricket from 1882 to 1923. The last game, between GCCC and Leicestershire, featured a young Wally Hammond and although his contribution was modest Gloucestershire won by five wickets. The ground today is the home of Gloucester City Winget CC, members of the West of England Premier League. The club was formed in 2005 by a merger of Gloucester CC and Winget CC.

Their third and fourth XIs play the matches at the Wagon Works ground which had replaced the Spa Ground in 1923 as the county's home in the county town. The romantically named ground in Tuffley Avenue was owned by the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company. There is still a link between the railway industry and the ground, albeit a somewhat tenuous one in that the pavilion for the adjacent bowling green started life as a railway carriage intended for the Central Argentine Railway but on its transatlantic journey in 1915 the ship carrying it was torpedoed. Two carriages were saved and brought back to the city to serve as pavilions and one still survives. 

The 155th and last first class game was played at Tuffley Avenue in May 1992, when  visitors Somerset won a tight match by 17 runs. A sixth wicket stand of 58 between Jack Russell and  Richard Scott had taken 'Glors' to within a sniff of victory but the last four batsmen, all victims of HRJ Trump, contributed zero runs between them and the last five wickets went down for just 14.

 Hammond played probably the most outstanding innings on this ground when he hit 317 against Notts. As recently as 2012 there were suggestions that Gloucestershire might return to Tuffley Avenue and indeed make it the county's headquarters. These ideas were precipitated by the club's financial misfortunes arising out of the cost of bringing the Bristol ground up to standard for international cricket, a not unfamiliar set of circumstances. With scaled down plans now approved a move back to Gloucester seems unlikely.

The Archdeacon Meadow ground is owned by King's School Gloucester and was first used by GCCC in 1992. No first class cricket has been played there since 2008. The cricket  I saw there sixteen years ago was fairly uninspiring: the first day had been washed out and Wisden says that the pupils at the school had, not for the first time, sacrificed their blankets to assist with mopping up .Essex skipper Paul Pritchard was critical of these sophisticated arrangements, and I don't suppose the boys were too chuffed either. Pritchard was rebuked for his tactics on the fourth day when the game petered out into a tame draw. One nice little touch was that the home team's number two and three batsmen both bagged a pair, Messrs Trainor and Cunliffe, with Mark Ilott the successful bowler on all four occasions. Jack Russell led a revival from 84 for 7 to 290 all out. On the fourth day 'the best of the Essex batting came from Stuart Law, with Grayson a stubborn partner'. (Wisden). Some spectators kept warm by wrapping themselves in blankets: school pupils looked on enviously.

Finally you may recall my reference to the wisdom of Dave Nosworthy, the Somerset Director of Cricket, in my most recent posting. It was with some anticipation that I looked yesterday to see how 'coach speak' might explain a defeat in under five sessions to Sussex. Perhaps not surprisingly the job had been passed to Head Coach Andy Hurry but fear not, for he too is fluent in the patois and his full offering can be found on the Somerset website. As a taster there is slots of 'going forward' whilst 'trying to turn things round', always a tricky operation but 'we will be practicing (sic) again on Friday to make sure we get our volume in and making sure we that we are positively reinforcing that this is the group of players that we want to keep going forward with'. Come back Dave, all is forgiven.