Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Seven-match festival is centrepiece of summer
CHELTENHAM College is set to host seven matches at next summer’s 152nd festival – with the inclusion of T20 cricket in a bumper schedule of fixtures.
The festival will kick-off with a County Championship match against Glamorgan from June 30 to July 3, and will be followed by three T20 Vitality Blast matches, two Western Storm women’s matches and an international fixture between England Under-19s and India Under-19 from July 16-19.
Gloucestershire face Kent on July 5, Middlesex on July 11 and then Glamorgan on July 14, with the Storm facing Northern Diamonds on July 7 and The Blaze on July 10 in the Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Trophy.
Gloucestershire’s Championship Division Two campaign gets going on Friday, April 5 with a four-day trip to face Derbyshire, followed the week after, starting on Friday, April 12, with the Shire’s first home match of the season against Yorkshire.
The first block of the County Championship campaign comes to a close with the reverse fixture against Derbyshire in Bristol, starting on Friday, May 24 and the final home match of the domestic season takes place from Tuesday, September 17 when Sussex are the visitors, while the season comes to a close with a trip to Cardiff to face Glamorgan starting on September 26.
Head coach Dale Benkenstein said: “It’s always great to get the confirmation of our fixtures and in many ways this acts as the starting point for the season that’s to come.
“It’s exciting to be able to look forward with optimism to returning to playing matches in the spring, and work to get us ready for that has already begun in the early stages of pre-season training.
“It’s especially pleasing to see us have the chance to showcase our T20 game at Cheltenham.
“The players love every chance they get to play at the college and it’s great to have the variation of playing a range of formats at the festival year-on-year.
“We’re all looking forward to the start of the season with lots of hard work planned in the meantime to give us the best possible chance of getting off to a good start in the championship come April.”
Somerset, meanwhile, begin their campaign with a Championship Division One match against Kent at Canterbury, starting on Friday, April 5, and they also play away to Surrey at The Oval the following week before eventually starting their home matches against Nottinghamshire at Taunton on Friday, April 19.
The county kick-off their Vitality Blast fixtures with a home match against Essex on Friday, May 30 – the day after the visitors make the trip to Bristol to face Gloucestershire.
The West Country derbies between the two rivals are scheduled for Friday, June 21 in Bristol, and then Sunday, July 7 in Taunton, which comes during the run of matches in Cheltenham. The sides are not scheduled to meet in the One-Day Cup.