Jersey captain Gough credits stable squad for promotion

Jersey captain Peter Gough has said that the camaraderie within the squad since 2014 has been crucial to the team’s success. Jersey secured their first win over Oman in five attempts to claim the WCL Division Five title on Sunday.

Gough told ESPNcricinfo that the title win was a big confidence heading into Division Four in Los Angeles later this year.

“We’re looking forward to it because it’s going to be five teams, well six including us, that are at the standard of Oman,” Gough said. “We’ve played Italy and Denmark before, and USA as well. We know they’re all good sides. It’s like the World T20 Qualifier, it’s what you strive to do. You don’t want to play games where you don’t get challenged. You want to play the best possible teams and try and beat them.

“We know there’s five really good sides there, but we know we’re one of them as well so there’s six good sides there. We want to challenge these sides. We know we can beat them. We’ve beaten Italy, we’ve beaten USA, we’ve beaten Oman now. All these teams we’re close to.”

Though Jersey gained promotion from Division Six at home in 2013, Gough said that the seeds for the team’s success were laid in Division Five held in Malaysia the following year. Eight members of the current squad – Gough, Corey Bisson, Cornelis Bodenstein, Anthony Hawkins-Kay, Jonty Jenner, Charles Perchard, Ben Stevens and Nat Watkins – have been in all five of Jersey’s ICC tournament squads since then. All but Gough from that group are 26 or younger, establishing what might be a solid nucleus for the next decade.

There were some growing pains not long after the core group got together, most notably relegation from 2014 WCL Division Four in Singapore. However, …

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