Charlie Garratt is hoping to hit the ground running when the new cricket season gets under way in May.

That is something that Bourton Vale failed to do last season, a season which saw them finish in mid-table in the Gloucestershire Division of the West of England League.

“We lost our first four games,” said Bourton skipper Garratt. “Then we went on a really good run, winning something like seven games before falling away at the end.”

And the 26-year-old is certainly hoping for better this time around.

“I took on the captaincy at the start of last season and I wouldn’t have taken it on if our aim wasn’t to win promotion,” he said.

“I knows it’s something we can achieve because we proved that we are a good side when we went on that winning run.

“When games got tight, we backed ourselves, we had that self-belief.”

And Garratt isn’t short of self-belief either, a confidence that has been gained by playing cricket with a number of clubs in this country as well as Down Under.

He first started playing cricket with his dad Peter for Great Rissington in his early teens before moving to Bourton when he was 14 or 15.

“That was in the days when Paul Lazenbury was captain and Bourton played in the Cherwell League,” said Garratt.

Garratt, who played youth team cricket at Hatherley and Reddings when he was part of Gloucestershire’s age group teams, has also played for Abbotskerswell in Devon, where he first got experience as a captain, and for Old Elizabethans in Worcester when he was a student in the city.

And he also spent seven months playing just outside.

“I played for a team called Strathdale Maristians in Bendigo,” he said. “It was an incredible experience. I was playing and doing a bit of coaching out there and it was the best standard of cricket I’ve played.”

All that experience has stood him in good stead, of course, not only in his role as leader of the team but also as the team’s opening batsman.

“I look to bat the 50 overs,” he said, “which hopefully allows the other players to play around me. The lads say I’m boring to watch but that’s not something I agree with!”

Garratt can also turn his arm over though he says he’s a “reluctant” bowler.

“I bowl when required which is a bit too often,” he chuckled. “I bowl slow medium – it’s getting slower and slower – and I tend to come on second change.”

Garratt is clearly a key player and he will need to have a big season if Bourton are to win promotion to the Gloucestershire/Wiltshire Division.

“We’ve got a handful of players who have played at a decent level,” added Garratt. “Ryan Newhook used to open the bowling for Oxfordshire and Ben Hughes opens the bowling and bats in the middle order. He likes to put bat to ball.

“Ollie Forbes opens the batting and keeps wicket. He’s one of our up and coming players and he plays some good shots while I’m blocking at the other end!

“And I’m hoping Mark Whitney has a good year as well because he’s one of our senior batsmen.”

They are encouraging times for the club because there is a core group of players with plenty of potential – including Gloucestershire age group left-arm spinner Max Shepherd – and Garratt is certainly excited by what is happening at the club both on and off the pitch.

“The new pavilion should be ready for the start of the season,” added Garratt, a business development manager who lives in Cheltenham.

“Everybody loved the old clubhouse but a new pavilion was much needed because the old place was falling down.”

The new pavilion has very solid foundations, of course, and it appears that the club’s flagship team are being built on equally solid foundations.