Glamorgan meet the Northants Steelbacks in their next game in the Vitality Blast on 13 September with the T20 contest at Sophia Gardens scheduled to start at 2.00pm.(writes Andrew Hignell)
After their 13-run defeat against the Birmingham Bears at Edgbaston on Friday evening, the Welsh county will be back in action at their headquarters against the Northants Steelbacks who also lost on Friday, by 35 runs to Gloucestershire at Wantage Road.
This will be the first time since July 2013 that Glamorgan and the Steelbacks have met at Cardiff in the T20 competition. Northants won on that occasion by six wickets after David Willey had claimed 3/17 with Mohammad Azharullah also taking 4/16 to stifle Glamorgan’s ambitions of posting a sizeable total after Chris Cooke had posted a combative half-century. In reply, Cameron White made an unbeaten 71 to guide the Steelbacks to their target with nine balls in hand.
Northants had also been victorious on their two previous visits to the Welsh capital, winning at Cardiff in 2012 by nine wickets after a half-century by Alex Wakely and in 2009 by 20 runs when Riki Wessles made an unbeaten 66 and South African spinner Nicky Boje had taken 3/14 after Glamorgan’s James Harris had filleted the Steelbacks batting with a waspish spell of 4/23.
In fact, Glamorgan have only won two of their previous twelve T20 games against the Steelbacks. The first came in 2004 at Northampton when a boundary-laden 43 by Darren Thomas guided the Welsh county to a five-wicket win, with the second occurring in 2008 at Sophia Gardens where a ten-run win was secured under the Duckworth-Lewis Method after Robert Croft had posted the top score of a low-scoring game with 46, whilst Dean Cosker – who will be the ECB’s Match Referee for Sunday’s contest - had claimed a pair of wickets in a typically miserly spell of left-arm spin.