Scorecard

Notts Outlaws crashed out of the Friends Provident Trophy after a heavy defeat at the hands of Gloucestershire Gladiators.

Having made only 189 from 44.2 overs after winning the toss, Notts never had enough runs to play with and despite whole-hearted bowling from England’s Ryan Sidebottom, slipped to a six-wicket defeat with 75 balls to spare.

Notts Director of Cricket Mick Newell was again left to reflect on the weakness of his top order and said: “We were playing on a pretty decent wicket and 240 or 250 would have been a good score.

“But while in the Championship the middle or lower order have been rescuing us from some difficult positions, we haven’t been able to get away with it in one-day cricket.

“All we can keep doing is trying to change the opening batsmen until we hit upon two people who can stay together for a decent period of time.

“Apart from when we had them at 60-3, we really didn’t put them under any pressure.”

Only Chris Read, Mark Ealham and Andre Adams reached 30 in the Outlaws innings, with the team collapsing to 9-3 and 40-5 before a mini-recovery was staged by a 62-run partnership for the seventh wicket between Read and Ealham.

Read hit three sixes and two fours to top-score with 57, while Ealham made 33 and Adams thumped 30 off 15 balls, including hitting Jon Lewis for 20 runs off four balls before holing out on the boundary.

Sidebottom, who requested and was given permission by the ECB to drive to Bristol from the Brit Oval following the end of England’s ICC World Twenty20 campaign, only arrived at the Notts hotel at 1am on Tuesday.

But the left-armer still put in 100 per cent with the ball in hand and finished with 1-34 from 10 overs, while Samit Patel picked up two wickets and Luke Fletcher one.

Chasing only 190 meant Gloucestershire could afford to take their time and saw off Sidebottom, with captain Craig Spearman guiding them home with an unbeaten 50.

Sidebottom said: “I’ve always said Notts have been brilliant in helping my career move forward - I probably wouldn’t be where I am now without them - so I was always looking to make the journey if I could.

“It’s not often you reach a quarter-final so I wanted to play and it’s just disappointing that we couldn’t make more of a fist of it.

“Unfortunately we were pretty poor with the bat and you can’t expect to win many games from 40-5. We gave it our all with the ball but it wasn’t to be.”