New year, new hope, and there’s certainly plenty of optimism around Gloucestershire County Cricket Club as they look ahead to 2020.

Their reward for an outstanding 2019 is a place in the top flight of county championship cricket for the first time since 2004.

And it wasn’t just the fact that they won promotion from Division Two, it was the way that they did it that had so many of their fans purring.

“We did it playing the Gloucestershire Way,” said David Partridge, a former player and lifelong supporter who these days is on the club’s executive board.

So what exactly is the Gloucestershire Way?

“Everyone wants to play for each other,” said Partridge. “Everyone wants to play for the county. If two or three players fail, another two or three will pick it up.

“Winning promotion was a complete team performance.”

It certainly was. They are a young side and, apart from the final three games when West Indies fast bowler Shannon Gabriel was brought in on a short-term contract, they achieved their goal without an overseas player.

As it happened Gabriel only picked up two wickets – he was expensive too – and Partridge said: “The way we won promotion is a huge credit to head coach Richard Dawson and the boys.”

And while it was a true team effort, a quick look at the end-of season averages will tell you that one player above all others was key to their success.

That player was all-rounder Ryan Higgins who scored more than 950 runs at close on 60 and took 50 wickets with his bustling medium pace at under 24.

The soon-to-be 25-year-old joined the club from Middlesex for the start of the 2018 season and Partridge is a big fan.

“He embodies the whole Gloucestershire spirit,” said Partridge. “He’s a top player and uses his head when he’s playing the game.

“He gives it everything and he always seems to find a way whatever the situation in a game, he’s held in very high regard by all the players.”

There are sure to be some tough situations for Chris Dent’s emerging side to cope with in 2020 so Higgins will again be a go-to player but Partridge believes the squad have the tools to survive and eventually prosper at the higher level.

“What we’re all about is sustainability,” continued Partridge. “We’re trying to create a squad and a team that can stay in Division One.

“It will be a challenge but we’re all thrilled to be back and the ultimate challenge is to compete for the title in years to come.”

Establishing themselves in the division and then kicking on won’t be easy of course.

“There will be fewer opportunities to score runs and there will be fewer opportunities to take wickets,” continued Partridge.

“So when you get those opportunities you have to take them. But even though we’re a young side, most of them have been playing for a few years, they are mentally tough.”

And the powers-that-be at the county were soon improving the squad after they secured promotion in late September.

Seam bowling all-rounder George Scott joined from Middlesex while it was confirmed that Afghanistan leg-spinner Qais Ahmad will be available for the final six four-day games of the season.

Ahmad will also be available for the T20 campaign and at just 19 – he won’t be 20 until August – he is certainly an intriguing signing.

“Richard Dawson spotted that we needed another spin bowler for the championship,” explained Partridge.

“He’s a good player and we identified him as someone we wanted. We’ll get him playing the Gloucestershire Way, he’ll be important for us.”

Partridge, now 65 and a player with Gloucestershire from 1976 to 1980, talks from the heart when he mentions the Gloucestershire Way.

By his own admission he was never the best all-rounder – he batted in the middle order and bowled right-arm medium – but he always knew what he wanted from the game.

“I was offered a three-year contract by Worcestershire when I was 20,” he said, “I said ‘no’ because I didn’t want to play for them.

“I grew up in Birdlip and I always wanted to play for Gloucestershire. I watched them play as a kid and they were the only team I wanted to play for.”

It’s fair to say there is more loyalty in cricket than many other team sports and the Gloucestershire Way is something that Partridge feels passionately about. It was present in his day and it’s clearly still there today.

“Ryan Higgins feels it,” said Partridge. “Halfway through his first season with us he told me he felt like ‘one of us’.”

Higgins’ outstanding form saw him welcomed with open arms by Gloucestershire supporters almost from day one but while his stats suggest he is one of the better players on the county circuit he will also be keen to win a trophy with the county, something that Partridge achieved in his time as a player.

That was in 1977 when a Gloucestershire side containing the likes of Mike Procter, Zaheer Abbas, Sadiq Mohammad, David Graveney, Brian Brain and Andy Stovold defeated Kent by 64 runs in the Benson and Hedges Cup final at Lord’s.

Procter and Zaheer are two of the greats of the game and Partridge admitted that to be playing alongside them in 1976 when he made his debut as a 21-year-old was “quite unbelievable”.

“I’d be standing at mid-off watching Mike Procter charging in to bowl,” he said. “It was incredible. I did start to feel more and more comfortable the longer I was in the team and in 1979 I played in every single game.”

That is something that Partridge is understandably very proud of but it still doesn’t top that day at the home of English cricket on 16th July 1977 when Gloucestershire won a second trophy in their proud 150-year history.

“It was an amazing day and I can still remember most of it,” said Partridge. “I remember being in the dressing room right at the start and Sadiq nicked the first ball of the innings from Kevin Jarvis down the legside for four.

“All the senior players said we were going to win after that.”

They were right of course and Partridge, who dismissed Alan Knott in the final at Lord’s, can also look back with pride on his role in the quarter-final win over Middlesex when he came on first change and took 2-27 from his 11 overs.

“I’ve got my gold medal and I’m very proud of it,” Partridge said.

Gloucestershire enjoyed great success in one-day cricket in the late 1990s and early noughties, of course, when the club’s current assistant head coach and former all-rounder Ian Harvey was arguably the most effective white ball cricketer in the country.

The club’s most recent success in white-ball cricket came in the Royal London One-Day Cup in 2015 when they beat Surrey by six runs in what proved to be a thrilling final.

That was Richard Dawson’s first season in charge – it was also Harvey’s first season back at the club – and Partridge is a huge fan of Dawson.

“He’s got a very good cricket brain,” said Partridge of the one-time England off-spinner. “He’ll analyse a situation, decide on the course of action and then stick to it.

“He backs his own judgement and his judgement is good.”

And it wasn’t just in the four-day game that Gloucestershire prospered last season because they also played some very good cricket in the white-ball formats and again reached the quarter-finals of the Vitality T20.

Going one step further and reaching a finals day at Edgbaston in September is a big ambition for everyone connected with the club and Partridge added: “We want to do well in every format of the game that we play.

“Every year we set ourselves that challenge – we don’t want to just focus on the county championship or the one-day game.”

There were no T20 competitions when Partridge was playing of course and he called time on his first class career in 1980 at the age of just 25 despite having only recently signed a new two-year contract.

“I’d played five years and I’d got my gold medal,” he said. “I’d had a good time and I didn’t want to be a journeyman cricketer.

“Every cricketer wants to play for England but that was something I wasn’t going to enjoy, especially with Ian Botham around!”

But unlike some, Partridge had something to fall back on because he also had a qualification in structural engineering and he went on to enjoy a hugely successful career in that industry before retiring some 10 months ago.

And while that was obviously a big part of his life, he was never lost to the great game that is cricket and he continued to play at club level for Cheltenham and then Birdlip and Brimpsfield, where he is now assistant groundsman.

And what of his position as a member of Gloucestershire’s executive board?

“I don’t watch Gloucestershire as much as I’d like but I do watch quite a lot of club cricket,” he said. “We’re all trying to spot a young guy coming through.

“I enjoy it and I’ve got a function. I think we need a focus on the north of the county, we need to embrace the north and make it feel part of the county.”

He’s spot on, of course, but then you’d expect nothing less from someone with his experience in the game.