Date-stamped : 08 Dec93 - 09:22 SOURCE: The Guardian DATE: 28 April 1993 SPO PAGE: 18 Cricket: Broad bats to fore but Bowler disposes MATTHEW ENGEL AT BRISTOL B & H Cup, preliminary round: Gloucestershire v Derbyshire THIRTY years ago this very week cup cricket was invented. What later became the Gillette Cup was coyly known as ''the knockout competition''. It was considered to be very with it at a time when cricket was thought to be unhip and indeed rather square. There was only one small drawback: the preliminary round was scheduled for May Day and poor old Leicestershire were knocked out before the season had properly started. That was hastily amended. And now those wonderful folks at Lord's have done it all over again. Under the new fixture list agreed when the counties voted in the Murray Report last season, the Benson and Hedges Cup has become a simple knockout tournament and poor old Gloucestershire were duly knocked out of one of cricket's major competitions with an r still in the month and muddied oafs in possession of most people's attentions. It was a damn close-run thing, though. Derbyshire eventually won with the scores level, having lost one wicket fewer: 198 for six against 198 for seven. The closing stages were thoroughly tense but in a way that took everyone by surprise. Derbyshire appeared to be coasting to vic- tory after an opening stand of 101 between Kim Barnett and Peter Bowler, who was eventually to be run out only eight short of his hundred. Almost through want of attention the middle order failed to fol- low through and Derbyshire found themselves needing 14 off the last two overs, with O'Gorman and Griffith both in what appeared to be a tizz. Next ball O'Gorman was run out by Alleyne's throw going for a second and for the first time in hours Gloucestershire were momentarily favourites. However, two inexperienced bowlers in Smith and Scott had to carry the team through this crisis and were not quite up to it. When the last ball came, with Derbyshire one run short, they knew they could win with the scores level. Scott bowled a half-volley that Krikken punched through the comparatively empty on side and Derbyshire were through. It ought to have been one of the biggest days of the season at Bristol, and in June it might have been. Instead, on a working Tuesday in April with a two-sweater wind whipping round the ground, there were a couple of hundred spectators. The sole pur- pose of having a second cup, aside from its place in tobacco marketing strategy, is supposedly to make money for the counties. It is hard to see the point of going on with it on this basis. It was also, of course, palpably unfair for players to go cold, metaphorically as well as literally, into such a crucial contest. This was Gloucestershire's first match of the season and Der- byshire had played only a let's-all-get-into-the-averages game at Cambridge. The fact that both teams had been on pre-season tours to places with climates rather different from Bristol in April probably made it even harder. Inevitably much of the cricket was rusty and it was those players who managed to show patches of midsummer form who dom- inated the play. Two of them happened to be Gloucestershire's new signings, Chris Broad and Kevin Cooper, both released last year in curious cir- cumstances by Nottinghamshire. For Broad, the Bristol boy back playing for his native county after nine years wandering, this ought to have been a triumphant homecoming. It was not much of a homecoming: too few people noticed for that. But it was, in a small way, a triumph. His first square cut went sweetly all the way across the damp turf for four and every- thing he did had the stamp of quality, at least until he tepidly drove a half-volley to cover on 58. Broad has often given the impression of regarding himself as an eagle surrounded by turkeys, and he left Gloucestershire in the first place because the club were not ambitious enough for him. He might have forgotten what used to happen when he got out. Richard Scott, the burly former Hampshire player who helped him put on 94 for the second wicket, followed two overs later and the middle order looked alarmingly brittle. Gloucestershire, 113 for one just after halfway, finished on 198 for seven, struggling hardest to make runs against Devon Malcolm, who bowled with some fire and more dependability than he some- times manages in one-day cricket. The Gloucestershire attack, with its lynchpin Walsh still far away, had less going for it than the batting. Its five members had taken five wickets for the county between them in this com- petition and not that many more in any other. There was a canny old spell from Cooper, however, which stopped the Derbyshire openers taking control completely. But a few blaz- ing shots from Barnett and the long, careful innings from Bowler gave them what appeared to be a solid advantage. However, appearances were deceptive - most especially from the new Bristol press box, which has room for about 50 journalists. Unfortunately only four of them can actually see the cricket and three the scoreboard. Contributed by The Management (help@cricinfo.com) ====> MORE Derbyshire v Gloucestershire, B+H Preliminary Round, 27 Apr 1993 Bristol: For Gloucestershire, it was a cruel way to start the season - knocked out of the cup before May, even though their to- tals were level at the finish: Derbyshire went through because they had lost five wickets to Gloucestershire`s seven. They made hard work of it after a century opening stand, needing 14 off the lasst 2 overs and still being one run behind when the last ball was bowled. Bowler, run out eight short of his 100, held the in- nings together at his own unhurried pace. Gloucestershire`s two recruits from Nottinghamshsire made an encouraging, if unavail- ing, mark on the game. Broad, on his return to the West, scored a composed half-century; Cooper was by far the tightest and most threatening of their bowlers. For Derbyshire, Malcolm bowled more sharply than his figures suggest. Thanks: 1994 Wisden Contributed by cp (help@*ogi.edu)