Essex stand defeats Glos

40L: Essex 267ao (40 overs) beat Gloucestershire 225ao (37.3overs) by 42 runs

David Payne became the first Gloucestershire bowler to take seven wickets in a one-day match but Gloucestershire still fell to a comfortable 42-run defeat.

He took four wickets with the first four balls of the 40th over. When Chris Martin walked out to bat he surely sensed a fifth wicket, and indeed had Martin play and miss, but the fifth wicket in the over fell to a run out by Batty off the final ball.

That remarkable finish to the Essex innings came after a positive start to the game, Gloucestershire winning the toss and bowling under heavy cloud and picking up Billy Godleman and the dangerous Mark Pettini cheaply.

But Essex won the game with a 166-run stand between Grant Flower (116 from 103 balls) and Ryan ten Doescathe (84 from 53 balls).

It was a marvellous stand, full of powerful hitting and beautiful stroke-making but Gloucestershire failed to build any real pressure and once momentum was with the batsmen, there was nothing Alex Gidman could seemingly do to stop the flow of runs - despite chopping and changing his seven bowlers.

What Gidman needed was control and no-one could provide that; the decision to rest Jon Lewis was perhaps regrettable.

What wasn't regrettable was the decision to throw Will Porterfield back into the line-up. Fresh from the West Indies, he played with urgency and control and his busy 65 from 64 balls looked like providing a decent reply but no-one went with him.

It was classic Gloucestershire batting. Attractive strokemaking and a soft dismissal was the feature of Hamish Marshall's, Chris Taylor's and Gidman's innings. One partnership of 81 was not enough to chase a large total.

Steve Snell again proved his worth as a specialist batsman, responding from three ducks in four innings to make a brisk half-century. But his lower-order runs came when his side were out of range.