Division One Strugglers go head-to-head as Gloucestershire welcome Somerset in the LV County Championship

As the white-ball season approaches, the County Championship will start to take a backseat, but with just one win between these two sides in the first-class format in 2022, the upcoming four days of action at the Seat Unique Stadium could have a huge bearing on their campaign’s. 

It has been a difficult start to Gloucestershire’s first return to the full Division One format since 2004, with Dale Benkenstein’s side drawing games against Northamptonshire and Surrey, whilst suffering damning defeats at the hands of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Hampshire.

Mohammad Amir was the standout performer with ball in hand in Gloucestershire’s previous outing at the Ageas Bowl, picking up six wickets in the two Hampshire innings.

Unfortunately, that was as good as it got as they did not fare too well with bat in hand, as George Scott’s 77 proved to be the highest across both innings, leading to a subsequent 87 run defeat.

Somerset will likely head into this contest the more confident of the two, as, despite a similar points tally, they picked up a somewhat surprise victory over last year’s Bob Willis Trophy winners Warwickshire in their previous outing.

After an opening game thrashing at the hands of Hampshire, Somerset had been on the end of a couple of narrow losses, including their defeat by a single wicket against Essex in one of the more calamitous games of the season. This would be until Jason Kerr’s side would welcome the effective defending champions to Taunton, where the hosts would put up an impressive 458, before dismantling Warwickshire in two consecutive innings and skittling them for a collective total of 376.

Matthew Renshaw stole the show with bat in hand, scoring 129 off 192 balls, but was assisted by some solid support acts in Tom Lammonby (56 off 93), Tom Abell (70 off 132) and Tom Banton (57 off 113). With only Craig Overton and Lewis Gregory going for less than a score of 18, there was a real sense of a collective batting effort that would ultimately go on to win Somerset the game.

The wickets were also evenly distributed across the two Warwickshire innings, with only Jack Brooks stealing the show somewhat in the second with four dismissals for a return of 44 runs.

With the white-ball season fast on the horizon, it is imperative for both sides to steer clear of the bottom before the break with a win.

Arguably, victory is more of an absolute must for the hosts in this instance, as they have played one more game than their counterparts, only picking up a singular point more. With Somerset set to play their game in hand before kicking off their T20 Blast campaign, they can perhaps afford a defeat more so, but Kerr will be adamant on building a buffer between themselves and the dreaded drop zone before shifting their focus to the shorter formats.

The last first-class game completed between the two sides was in the midst of the pandemic, with Gloucestershire picking up a convincing eight-wicket win in Taunton.

The Weather is set to get progressively warmer as the match goes on, starting with mid-teens on Thursday and rising as high as 23°C come late Sunday afternoon. Both sides have seriously struggled with bat in hand so far, with Gloucestershire amassing an average of just under 286 per innings, whilst Somerset have only managed 225, with that average greatly boosted by their 458 against Warwickshire.

As such, the visitors will hope that they can maintain the form from their previous game as they make the short trip up to Bristol, and will hope to avoid falling back into the habit of sub-200 scores. As for Gloucestershire, they will hope that the previous game was somewhat of an anomaly and will look to pour pressure on the Somerset batsmen and reduce them to a meagre total to protect the imperfections of their own batting lineup.

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