Glamorgan return to Cardiff for their next game in the LV=Insurance County Championship as they welcome Kent to Sophia Gardens for a contest scheduled to get underway behind closed doors at 11am on Thursday, 29 April. (writes Andrew Hignell)
This game is set to see two of county cricket’s senior statesmen go head-to-head as Kent’s Darren Stevens, who celebrates his 45th birthday during the match in Cardiff, plays against Glamorgan’s Michael Hogan, five years his junior and another person firmly of the opinion that age is just a number, with the pair – neither of whom have ever appeared in international cricket – having a combined career aggregate of 1167 first-class wickets.
Darren, who a fortnight ago was named as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year, enjoyed the better of the contest the last time Kent visited Sophia Gardens during May 2018, with his seam bowling heralding a dramatic collapse after lunch on the opening day as Glamorgan lost ten wickets for 37 runs in the space of 15.2 overs, with the all-rounder claiming 6/12 in the space of 44 balls, and – like Sussex’s Ollie Robinson in the recent Championship contest at Cardiff - displaying the old-fashioned virtues of line and length.
Timm van der Gugten responded by completing career-best figures of 7/42 in another fine display of controlled seam bowling, but the Dutchman could not prevent Kent securing what proved to be a match-winning lead of 80 runs with the visitors going on to win the contest by six wickets – one of eight Championship victories for the English side at Sophia Gardens, with the most emphatic being their 316-run win during in 2015.
However, Michael Hogan – who now has 389 first-class wickets to his name for Glamorgan – produced the standout performance when Kent visited Cardiff in 2014 and went down to defeat by an innings and eleven runs. Michael claimed 5/58 and 5/67 to record his first ten-wicket match haul for the Welsh county as Glamorgan recorded their fourth victory over Kent in seventeen Championship encounters at Sophia Gardens, before a few days later he was a thorn in the Kent side again as in the Twenty20 contest between the two teams, Michael delivered an outstanding final over as the contest ended in a nerve-jangling tie.
Michael also claimed a ten-wicket haul when the two sides met at Canterbury in the closing Championship match of the 2017 season. Even though Joe Denly scored 152, a youthful Glamorgan side completed a five-wicket victory inside three days, with Michael and the rest of his colleagues looking to bounce back from their defeat at Northampton in the game against Kent who are one place below the Welsh county at the foot of the Group 3 table.