“It is part of our fabric, something that has to be defended.”

Those are the words of David Graveney, Gloucestershire’s president-elect and past captain, who was talking about Cheltenham Cricket Festival in a wide-ranging interview with The Local Answer ahead of the new season.

And they are words with which club chairman Peter Matthews wholeheartedly agrees.

“Cheltenham Festival really matters to me, I’ve been going there since 1972,” Matthews said. “I remember as a boy having the good fortune to be coached there by Zaheer Abbas.”

The former Pakistan Test batsman, who is now 78, is one of Gloucestershire’s true greats.

He played for the county for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s and like many ex-players will have very fond memories of playing at Cheltenham.

“It’s a great festival,” said Matthews, who was speaking at a meeting at The Clarence Social in Cheltenham, hosted by the club, to promote this year’s festival.

“At a time when most clubs are cutting back on where they take their cricket, we are absolutely committed to Cheltenham Festival.

“It’s a really big part of where we are and what we do. It’s big for the club, big for the town and big for the north of the county, and it will continue to be a very important part of what we do.”  

This year’s Cheltenham Cricket Festival is still five months away but Matthews and his team have been hard at work to make sure the 2026 version is as good as the previous 150-plus.

In truth, they have been hard at work almost from the moment the marquees started to come down at Cheltenham College at the end of last year’s festival, a festival that was a success.

The cricket was good, the spectators turned up in big numbers and it showed a small profit.

This year’s Cheltenham Cricket Festival will run from Saturday 8^th August until Sunday 23^rd August and will kick off with Gloucestershire Women hosting Sussex Sharks in the Metro Bank One Day Cup Women's League 2.

Eight days later they will host Kent in the same competition, two games that Gloucestershire hope will further promote the increasingly popular women’s game in the county.

In between those matches, the men will play One Day Cup games against Nottinghamshire on Sunday 9^th August and Northamptonshire on Tuesday 11^th August.

The festival will finish with a four-day County Championship Division Two game on Thursday 20^th August against near neighbours Worcestershire, who are expected to bring plenty of supporters.

There will also be one extra game for the men, should they secure a home semi-final in the One Day Cup, something the club is obviously anxious to achieve.

“What a brilliant day it would be if we could have a home semi-final at Cheltenham,” said Gloucestershire director of cricket Jon Lewis.

“It’s such a unique place to play, we’d have ground advantage as well as playing in front of a big crowd.”

And there is little doubt that Gloucestershire’s supporters would turn up in huge numbers if that game was played at the festival.

Some 3,500 fans watched them play Derbyshire in a One Day Cup group game at Cheltenham last year, while there was a record crowd for a women’s tier 2 game of 2,500 to watch Gloucestershire take on Sussex Sharks.

That women’s game was part of a double-header and Lewis, who was part of a panel alongside Matthews at The Clarence Social, that also included head coach Mark Alleyne and players Ollie Price and Joe Phillips, added: “That was an unbelievable crowd, it’s an unbelievable crowd for a tier 1 game.

“For the players, the opportunity to play in front of a big crowd is very rare.

“They would have been very nervous but it is something they will cherish. It’s something they will always remember.”