It's a case of third meets fourth as Glamorgan welcome the Kent Spitfires to the SWALEC Stadium on Friday, June 13th for a contest in the NatWest t20 Blast which is scheduled to get underway at 6.30pm (Gates open at 5pm).
Match Preview
The Welsh county's victory at Taunton last Friday, plus the washout at Bristol against Gloucestershire on Sunday, lifted Jim Allenby's team briefly up into second place in the table behind Hampshire, with the Kent Spitfires in third place and the Essex Eagles in fourth. On Wednesday evening at Canterbury, the Spitfires met the fourth-placed Eagles with the latter winning by six wickets to soar above both Glamorgan and Kent into second place in the table.
Despite their defeat , Rob Key was again in belligerent mode for the Spitfires, striking 62 from 40 balls and continued his run of decent scores in this year's competition, having struck 46, 24, 89* and 36 in the other games. Having shared an opening stand of 119 against Essex with Daniel Bell-Drummond, the Kent captain is quite literally a key figure in their line-up.
Even though Darren Stevens began by bowling a wicket maiden - the rarest commodity of all in Twenty20 cricket - the Eagles raced to their target of 190 in 19 overs, thanks to some bludgeoning blows by Ravi Bopara and Ryan ten Doeschate who shared a century partnership during the second half of the Eagles innings with Man-of-the-Match Bopara making 81 from just 44 balls.
Glamorgan have never beaten the Spitfires in their four previous meetings in the short form of the game, with the English side winning a rain-affected contest in July 2010 at Cardiff by 14 runs under the Duckworth-Lewis Method, as well as by six wickets when they met the following June at Glamorgan's headquarters.
In that match in 2011, Glamorgan's captain, Alviro Petersen made 65 but his efforts were trumped by an unbroken stand of 66 for the fifth wicket between Sam Northeast and Wahab Riaz, with the Pakistani unleashing a series of lusty leg-side blows which saw the contest swing decisively back in the visitor's favour.
Team News
Glamorgan have named a 14-man squad for the match against the Kent Spitfires at the SWALEC Stadium on Friday evening. The Glamorgan squad in full is Jim Allenby (capt), Jacques Rudolph, Mark Wallace (w/k), Stewart Walters, Murray Goodwin, Chris Cooke, Ben Wright, David Lloyd, Darren Sammy, Graham Wagg, Andrew Salter, Dean Cosker, Will Owen and Michael Hogan.