Dent believes Glos will be refreshed for Taunton
29 May 2018
Gloucestershire captain Chris Dent says the the club's schedule in the Royal London One Day Cup can help them as they prepare for their final three matches in the South Group.
While the other eight teams all have a midweek fixture, Gloucestershire don't play again until they make the short trip to Taunton on Friday, a period that Dent thinks will be beneficial.
"The matches have been coming thick and fast and you're pretty drained at the end of a 50 over game" said Dent. "To play again or travel to the next game after only one day off is tiring, so we're trying to use this little break well, practicing for a couple of hours each day but not overloading things. It was handy to get a good start with the two wins but at Surrey we lacked a bit of consistency in our batting and bowling and our fielding wasn't as clean as we'd like."
Dent scored a century in Gloucestershire's last List A game at Taunton in 2016, although it was a match Somerset rescued with a last wicket stand between Jamie Overton and Tim Groenewald. Both teams remain in contention in what is a very close group, and the Gloucestershire captain is looking forward to the first "cider derby" of the season.
"Our overall record against them in recent years is quite even" Dent went on. "We've played against each other a lot so it's about who turns up and plays the best on the day, hopefully on a good batting pitch."
"We have three games left and if we can win at least two of them we'll give ourselves a good chance of going through because we'd be taking points off teams around us. If we don't do that we probably won't deserve to be in the top three in the table."
