SWINDON will be without their two regular opening bowlers when they go looking to claw themselves back to winning ways at Gloucester City Winget tomorrow.

The County Ground men have suffered three defeats on the spin in the Glos/Wilts Division and came agonisingly close to breaking their losing run at home to Tewkesbury last weekend as their score of 273-7 was surpassed by their visitors with less than an over to spare.

Swindon have their fingers crossed that they can shake the monkey from their back at Gloucester but vice-captain Jon Sore is sure that their task will be made all the more difficult by the absence of Matt Kidd and Will Nichols.

“With no Matt Kidd and no Willie Nichols, we’ve lost both of our opening bowlers, so that doesn’t help us at all,” said Sore. “Matt Drakeley will come in for Willie and, because it’s quite a late withdrawal, we haven’t replaced Matt yet.

“It’s far from ideal and it looks like Tom Codling will have to come to the party and chip in with some wickets.

“You have to give credit to Tewkesbury for last weekend and if we can get a score of 270 again, that would be enough to win a game on another day.

“Gloucester are a good side and we’re going to take the same approach with the bat there to try and get that win.

“We’ve also got a T20 (Wiltshire Wallop) quarter-final tonight against Malmesbury, so if we could win that one, that would help us take some momentum into the Gloucester game.”