Gloucestershire V Derbyshire day 3

Derbyshire 291 and 97-2 (Lace 48* Madsen 41*)

Gloucestershire 350 (Roderick 98, Higgins 74, Reece 3-60, van Beek 3-75)

Derbyshire lead by 38 runs

With a day to go, it is hard to see where a positive result can come from in this game.

The home side, largely through the stoic efforts of Gareth Roderick, took a first innings lead of 59 runs. Roderick batted with great common sense and no little skill and was very unfortunate to be caught behind, just short of his century.

I was more impressed today by Logan van Beek and he, with Ravi Rampaul, mopped up the tail quite nicely. Logan and Luis Reece each had 3 wickets and the lead left Derbyshire a tricky spell before and after tea.

They lost Reece to the second ball of the innings and Godleman didn't last long either. Neither opener has yet got going this season and the concern that Reece's bowling may be to the detriment of his batting goes on. I suspect it is only a temporary hiatus in the usual flow of runs for both, as soon as they get on to wickets with fewer early demons.

Yet after a few initial alarms, Wayne Madsen and Tom Lace steered us in a professional manner to 97-2 at the close, the former unbeaten on 41 and Lace two runs short of a third successive half-century. He looks an increasingly impressive player and pre-season concerns over a batsman with no first class fifty have been allayed. He offers composure and class to the county middle order and will doubtless be a big asset this summer.

As for the game, we are 38 runs on and it is hard to see a positive finish here, unless the two captains contrive something tomorrow. While the wicket does not appear to contain any obvious problems , nor is it easy to score quickly enough to force a win for either side.

It will need something spectacular on one side or the other for anything but a draw tomorrow.