NOW we look forward. That is the message from Bristol’s County Ground.

The player’s prize money pool for winning the Royal London One-Day Cup is £100,000 and I expect the club to benefit by about £80,000 from the Lord’s triumph. Despite that the season will still show a loss, but a much smaller one.

There is one playing issue to be settled; James Fuller has yet to sign a new contract. Early in the season James was inconsistent and had some poor T20 performances. My view is that was then and this is now.

The Lord’s final showed how he is maturing, his bowling being both accurate and penetrating. He must not be allowed to leave, having the potential to be a real match-winner. Other counties will certainly be interested. Act quickly please, Gloucestershire.

There is talk of an experienced batsman joining the squad. Only one county earned less batting points than us and it showed in the championship battle. We won five matches, but teams with three and four victories finished above us because of the dearth of batting points.

One other area for improvement is our form at Bristol. It is abject, all our championship victories being away from the city.

We never looked like winning the final Glamorgan game for two reasons. Firstly the wicket was too good, more than 1,300 runs being scored and just 23 wickets being taken. Bold captaincy was needed and was not forthcoming.

Regrettably the home side were to blame. We should have declared on reaching 300, over 140 runs behind Glamorgan.

They would have then been morally bound to set us a target to chase. It would have been a tough one, but in sacrificing two bonus points in the hope of 16 points for a win one thing is certain, the last day would have been more entertaining.

One final word about Michael Klinger, now back in Australia. Two first division clubs came shopping with their cheque books open. If he had signed for one he would have been opening the batting with Marcus Trescothick. He declined both offers being happy at Bristol, both with the emerging team and with the way the club have looked after him and his family. Well done off the field staff at H.Q.

In the excitement of Lord’s, some of you may have missed the good news that next year’s County Championship programme will not be cut making a realistic Cheltenham Festival possible. The battle has been won by I am afraid the war will continue.

While watching the rain at Canterbury I spoke to Sam Northeast, the Kent captain. I quote his exact words: “Cheltenham must stay. We all love playing there. It is the jewel in the cricket crown.” Well said, Sam.

He did have another valid point about the amount of cricket played. We checked the figures. Both our counties are down to play 84 days’ cricket in a season lasting 164 days. The problem is that some teams are overloaded during some periods and then do nothing for ten days. This is not good enough.