CAPTAIN Hamish Marshall believes Gloucestershire can use the character they’ve shown in other competitions to bounce back from their opening Friends Life t20 defeat at Worcestershire, writes Rob Iles.

Gloucestershire started their County Championship and Clydesdale Bank 40 campaigns with defeats but came back strongly by winning their next matches.

With only ten games in the group stages of this year’s FL t20 and after their first game against Somerset was cancelled due to rain, Marshall knows it is important for his side to pick up a victory against Northants at Bristol on Friday, 5.30pm.

“Twenty20 is all about momentum and winning early games gives you that,” he said.

“We’ve got one point from two games so we need to get back on the horse.

“In the one-day competition and the four-day competition we lost our first games. We were disappointed but we bounced back and hopefully on Friday against Northants we can do the same thing.

“They’re under pressure as well because they lost their first game so at the end of the day the team that turns up and puts in a good performance will be the team that gets the points.”

Marshall blamed fielding errors for the defeat in Worcester, the most critical of which saw Moeen Ali escape on four when Jack Taylor misjudged a catching opportunity before going on to make 82 in his side’s total of 213-2.

“It was crucial in terms of the runs he scored,” admitted Marshall.

“We know that if we take those opportunities, take early wickets and put teams under pressure it would be a different story.

“Chasing 175 would’ve been a par score on that wicket, we just let ourselves down a bit with our errors in the field.

“They were two down at the end. Two batsmen spent a lot of the time in the middle and we got punished.”

Marshall top-scored with 42 from just 22 balls in Gloucestershire’s reply and insists being handed the captaincy for that format of the game will make no difference to the way he plays.

“I still play the way that I want at the top of the order and the captaincy is just another part of my game,” he said.

“The lads go about their business pretty well, it’s just a matter of putting the fielders in the right positions, picking when the bowlers bowl and hopefully making the right decisions.

“We were under a lot of pressure, and as a captain I felt that and it was tough. I’m still learning I guess at the same time that others are learning their game.”

Kane Williamson will play his last game for Gloucestershire against Northants. Marshall’s men visit then visit Glamorgan for a floodlit game on Saturday before taking on Warwickshire at home next Wednesday (5.30pm).