Glamorgan return to Cardiff for their next game in the Vitality Blast with the T20 contest against Surrey on Wednesday 7 June scheduled to start at Sophia Gardens at 1830pm. (writes Andrew Hignell)
It will be a case of second against third in the group table with Glamorgan meeting the side who are also on eight points but who are ahead of them by virtue of a superior net run rate. Second-place Surrey have won four of their six games and boast a net run rate of 0.953 compared with third-place Glamorgan who have won four of their five games with a net run rate of 0.524.
As the list below shows, last year’s match between the two sides at Sophia Gardens ended up as a No Result as rain set in during the second over of Glamorgan’s innings as they chased a target of 161.
24 June 2016 - Glamorgan won by 9 wickets
28 July 2017 - Match Abandoned
17 August 2018 - Surrey won by 24 runs (DLS Method)
11 August 2019 - Surrey won by 7 wickets
29 June 2021 - Glamorgan won by 1 run
5 June 2022 - No Result
The match at Cardiff in 2021 was a crackerjack of a contest with Glamorgan clinching a one-run victory after a contrasting pair of final overs to each innings. For the Welsh county, Billy Root, opened his shoulders to strike four sixes in the last over against Gus Atkinson as his team went from 129-6 to 153-6.
In contrast, Surrey needed thirteen to win from the final six balls, but Kyle Jamieson, the hard-hitting fast bowler from New Zealand plus veteran captain, Gareth Batty, could only muster eleven as Timm van der Gugten held his nerve and parried a drive from the Kiwi to the final ball of the gripping contest before calmly running him out at the bowler’s end as he tried to scamper a single to tie the game,
This avenged the defeats by Surrey at Cardiff in 2018 and 2019. In the former, Aaron Finch bludgeoned an unbeaten 44 as Surrey raced to 60-0 in five overs to win a rain-shortened contest, whilst in 2019 Mark Stoneman posted an assertive fifty, before a half-century stand by Ben Foakes and Ollie Pope saw Surrey to their target.