Glamorgan return to T20 action as they meet the Birmingham Bears at Edgbaston in the Vitality Blast on Friday, 11 September, with the game scheduled to start at 1830. (writes Andrew Hignell)
After their draw at Sophia Gardens in the Bob Willis Trophy, the two teams decamp to Edgbaston for Friday night’s T20 encounter. The Birmingham Bears are currently in fourth place in the group table with two victories under their belt, whilst the Welsh county are in fifth place with their sole victory coming against Gloucestershire at Bristol. In all, the two teams have met on fifteen previous occasions in T20 games with Glamorgan winning six and the Bears winning nine, whilst three other matches were washed out and abandoned.
The Bears were Glamorgan’s opponents when they met in the opening semi-final at Edgbaston on Finals Day on 2 September 2017, with the Bears winning the contest on their home ground by 11 runs. This was the Bears first victory over the Welsh county since June 2009, when they won by four wickets as Rikki Clarke and Ant Botha scored the winning runs with seven balls remaining.
Before that, Glamorgan had rattled up four successive victories against the Bears between 17 June 2012 and 6 July 2013, winning two rain-affected games during 2012 under the Duckworth-Lewis Method by five runs at Cardiff, and by 22 runs at Edgbaston, before winning both games during 2013, firstly by four wickets at Cardiff and then by eight wickets at Rugby School.
In the latter game at the home of the oval-ball game, it was Michael Hogan who took the honours as he claimed 3/11 in a typically frugal spell to restrict the Warwickshire Bears to 126-8 in their 20 overs, before Mark Wallace struck an unbeaten 69 to wrap up an emphatic victory for the Welsh county with fourteen balls to spare.