Alleyne hopes fine form will continue in T20 Blast

Gloucestershire cricket head coach Mark Alleyne believes that his side will compete this season in the T20 Blast despite “not ideal” preparation.

It is Alleyne’s first year as a head coach for Gloucestershire replacing Dale Benkenstein and the county has already seen an upturn in form in the County Championship heading into the T20 Blast.

Alleyne was speaking in between two T20 warm up games on Wednesday, in which Gloucestershire ran out victors in both.

The 56-year-old said: “I think they’ve always been a good group of cricketers, there’s no doubt about that. Sometimes you just need to install a little bit of confidence into the players and in the end they kind of support each other if you like.

“They feed of each other’s confidence and energy, and we’ve batted kind of consistently well so far this year, we’ve got some good bowling weapons which will hopefully win us some matches.”

In last year’s T20 Blast, Gloucestershire finished seventh in the South group and the county haven’t made a finals day since 2020.

Alleyne touched on what it would mean for the side to make it that far.

“Of course it would mean a hell of a lot but in a lot of ways you don’t start a tournament thinking about the very last day of the tournament, you know we’ve got 14 big moments before that,” he said.

First up for Alleyne’s side in the Blast is the visit of Essex on Thursday, May 30 before travelling to Sussex on Friday, May 31.

“It would be really good to get off to a start which would set the tempo for the rest of the tournament,” Alleyne said.

Gloucestershire failed to win a single game in last year’s County Championship, but they already have two wins in the competition this year before the break.

Alleyne felt this will have a big impact on his side heading into the T20 Blast.

“The first seven games have been pretty good, getting wins are hard to come by, not through performance but certainly losing sessions to weather, doesn’t help too much but yeah we played some really good cricket,” he said.

T20 captain Jack Taylor scored 88 (50) in the first of the T20 warmups on Wednesday and he is delighted with the new coach’s involvement.

Taylor said: “Yeah, I think it’s been really good. It’s nice to have Mark [Alleyne], obviously a few of us have worked with Mark before, so it’s a really nice, relaxed environment.

“It’s nice that we’re playing some good cricket; we’ve got a lot of players in form so hopefully we can keep that going through the blast.”

Ajeet Singh Dale has featured under Alleyne in some County Championship games this season and he has also noticed a difference with the new regime.

Dale said: “I think we’ve had fresh ideas going into the new season, over the last few years it’s been difficult from a results point of view, but we’ve felt like we’ve been improving individually and collectively.

“We did feel like this improvement in outcomes was going to come and yeah Mark has been great this season and we feel like we’re in a really positive mindset as a group.”

Preparation for the T20 Blast hasn’t gone as smoothly as Alleyne would’ve liked due to weather and the tight schedule, but he doesn’t feel that will make a huge difference.

“They’re feeling pretty good,” he said. “I’ve got to say ideally we would’ve liked a bit more space and time to prepare for the tournament, having finished a championship game on Monday.

“It’s trying to get the balance right between rest, recovery and trying to get the skills up to T20 standard so it’s not been ideal, but most counties are in the same boat.”

The T20 Blast league campaign runs from the May 30 to July 19 with 18 counties trying to secure a spot in the quarter-finals and then finals day which, this year, is on Saturday, September 14.