Glamorgan welcome Leicestershire to Sophia Gardens for their opening Rothesay County Championship match of the 2025 season, with the four-day contest scheduled to get underway at 11.00am on Friday, 4 April. (writes Andrew Hignell).
After their draws against Worcestershire and Cardiff UCCE in their pre-season programme, Glamorgan’s cricketers turn their attention to the opening first-class game of the 2025 season against Leicestershire. It will be the earliest-ever Championship match in a domestic season in which Glamorgan have been involved, beating by one day the game between the two counties at Grace Road in Leicester in 2012, as well as last year’s record-breaking contest against Middlesex at Lord’s during which Sam Northeast scored an unbeaten 335.
There were runs aplenty from another Glamorgan batter in last year’s game against Leicestershire at Cardiff with Colin Ingram making 257*. His career-best score helped the Welsh county to a first innings lead of 299, before Leicestershire lost early wickets in their second innings, raising hopes of an emphatic victory for the home side. But Ajinka Rahane, the Indian Test batter and Australian Peter Handscomb then posted centuries of their own as the game ended in a draw.
Colin’s double-hundred has come during a remarkable run, which now stretches back to 26 September 2023 during which the southpaw has made a score of 50 or more in every one of Glamorgan’s last twelve Championship matches, with his productive sequence including five hundreds and totalling 1,451 runs at an average of 85.35 in twenty innings. He was also the country's leading run scorer in first-class cricket last summer with 1, 351 runs, twenty more than fellow South African David Bedingham in Division One for Durham.
Another Australian made an undefeated hundred when the two teams met at Cardiff in 2023 with Glamorgan’s Michael Neser making 176*. His efforts came on the third day of the rain-ravaged match which had seen just seventeen of the scheduled 192 overs being bowled on the opening two days, and all after Michael had been released from the Australian squad, ostensibly to gain some bowling practice ahead of the closing matches in the Ashes series!
In all, Glamorgan have won 37 out of the 152 first-class games between the two teams with the Welsh county winning in 2022 at Sophia Gardens by six wickets after amassing 437 in their first innings, thanks to half-centuries from Kiran Carlson (91), Sam Northeast (84) and Chris Cooke (52), plus a very generous 64 extras conceded by the visitors.
2019 saw Glamorgan victorious by 291 runs in their game against Leicestershire at Cardiff after Kraigg Brathwaite had made an unbeaten 103, whilst in 2018 the East Midlands side were beaten by 132 runs thanks to 83 from Kiran Carlson plus feisty half-centuries from Craig Meschede and Timm van der Gugten.
Leicestershire’s most recent Championship victory at Sophia Gardens came in April 2016 when they won by ten wickets with their victory being set up by a first innings haul of 6/73 from Clint McKay, another Australian, who then used the long handle to post a defiant half-century with Irishman Niall O’Brien also top scoring with 93 before Ben Raine made inroads into Glamorgan’s second innings with the all-rounder claiming four wickets.