Glamorgan play their first home match of the 2024 season as they welcome Derbyshire to Sophia Gardens for their next contest in the Vitality County Championship with the four-day game scheduled to start at 1100 on Friday, 12 April. (writes Andrew Hignell)
The first-class season began last week with the effects of Storm Kathleen playing havoc with a number of matches including Derbyshire’s opening contest at Derby with their game against Gloucestershire being washed out without a ball being bowled. In contrast, Glamorgan did not lose any playing time across their four days against Middlesex at Lord’s with Sam Northeast enjoying a memorable visit to the St. John’s Wood ground with a majestic and record-breaking 335*. The Welsh county’s red-ball captain has now scored 515 runs since he was last dismissed in a Championship match.
Last year’s game at Cardiff between Glamorgan and Derbyshire – during the final week of September – ended in a draw with Colin Ingram top-scoring with 82 whilst Luis Reece scored a hundred in each innings, emulating what he had also done at Derby earlier in the summer against Glamorgan as he become the first-ever batter in county history to score four successive hundreds in a season against the same opponents.
The Welsh county secured an emphatic innings victory in 2022 when they welcomed the Peakites to Cardiff with David Lloyd – now the Derbyshire captain - scoring an unbeaten 313 as his team posted 550-5 before declaring. A five-wicket haul by Kiwi spinner Ajaz Patel saw Derbyshire follow-on 297 runs in arrears before a stand of 128 in 37.5 overs between Wayne Madsen and Leus du Plooy steadied Derbyshire’s second innings. Their stand ended when James Harris, during an exemplary post-lunch spell, saw Madsen chop a short ball onto his stumps, before Glamorgan took the new ball with Michael Hogan ending the contest as Timm van der Gugten caught Sam Conners on the long-leg boundary.
In 2017 the two teams were involved in a day-night contest at Sophia Gardens as the game's authorities briefly experimented with floodlights and pink balls in four-day cricket. Derbyshire won by 39 runs as Glamorgan, chasing a target of 212 were dismissed for 172 as their batters struggled against the wily spin bowling of Sri Lanka’s Jeevan Mendis and teenage debutant Hamidullah Qadri, now with Kent, who took 5/60 on his debut in Championship cricket.
This match could be a landmark game for one of the Welsh county’s batters as, following the magisterial triple hundred by Sam Northeast and Colin Ingram’s 132* at Lord’s, the next Glamorgan centurion will post the 1000th hundred in first-class cricket for the Club.