After the second day of the ‘bonus’ four-day game between Gloucestershire and Lancashire at Cheltenham College was yesterday abandoned due to rain, there’s some good news for cricket fans in Cheltenham.

That’s because this year’s Cheltenham Cricket Festival, as well as featuring two county championship games and two T20 games involving Gloucestershire, will provide another bonus – one with an international flavour.

England’s Under-19s, whose head coach is former Gloucestershire seamer Jon Lewis, will be bringing their ODI Tri Series with India and Bangladesh to Cheltenham over the final three days of the Festival.

England’s young guns will take on India on Friday 26th July before playing Bangladesh two days later, with India and Bangladesh playing each other on the Saturday.

All matches are 50 overs-a-side with the three teams playing each other eight times in total at various venues across the country before the final in August.

And there’s every likelihood that one of Gloucestershire’s rising stars – Ben Charlesworth – will feature in the ODI Tri Series.

The 18-year-old left-handed opening batsman enjoyed an excellent tour of Bangladesh in January and February with England Under-19s, playing in both youth Tests and all three one-day youth internationals, scoring 99 and 63 in the longer format and making 115 of an all-out score of 203 in the final 50-over game.

Charlesworth, who also bowls right-arm medium fast, featured in the middle order for Gloucestershire in the handful of championship games he played for the county last season.

He made his first-class debut against Warwickshire in August last year at the age of 17 and in early September made an unbeaten 77 against Middlesex, which he followed up by taking 3 for 25.

When he reached his half-century, he became the youngest player to reach that landmark for the county for 70 years. He then maintained his good form in the following game when he made 72 against Glamorgan.

A pupil at St Edward’s School in Oxford, he will not feature for Gloucestershire this season until his exams are over, but he is expected to be one of the main players in Jon Lewis’ squad for the Under-19 World Cup which will take place in South Africa at the beginning of next year.

The Under-19 World Cup is held every two years with the most recent being in New Zealand in January and February of last year.

It was before that tournament that Jon Lewis, now 43, took over as head coach, stepping up from bowling coach.

Lewis is very well known to Gloucestershire supporters, of course, having been a mainstay of their seam attack for many years after making his debut in 1995.

He played for the county 16 seasons and in a career that eventually ended in 2014 after spells with Surrey and then Sussex he took 849 first class wickets at well under 27 apiece.

He was also good enough to play one Test, 13 one-day internationals and two T20s for England and it is that huge experience that is being used to develop the current crop of young England players.

The England Under-19 set-up is a big part of the development of young cricketers in this country and anyone in any doubt should just look at the make-up of the England side for the Under-19 World Cup in 2010 which included three superstars of today – Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes and Joe Root.

The Cheltenham Cricket Festival gets under way on Monday 15th July with Gloucestershire playing a four-day game against Leicestershire. This will be followed by a T20 game against Glamorgan on Friday 19th July before the start of another four-day game, against Worcestershire, which begins on Sunday 21st July.

Gloucestershire’s final game in this year’s Festival is the T20 clash with Middlesex on Thursday 25th July.

The county’s current game against Lancashire is being played at Cheltenham because the club’s Bristol ground is being used for World Cup warm-up matches.