It’s the biggest Twenty20 game at Cardiff in Glamorgan’s history for a dozen years as Glamorgan meet the Yorkshire Vikings at The SSE SWALEC on Thursday, August 11th in the last quarter-final of the NatWest T20 Blast, with the Welsh county just one win away from a place at Finals Day at Edgbaston.
2004 was the last time that Glamorgan’s headquarters staged a quarter-final in the Twenty20 competition and since then the Sophia Gardens ground has metamorphosed into The SSE SWALEC, successfully hosting two Ashes Test Matches, a series of matches in the Champions Trophy and other One-Day Internationals, as well as T20 Finals Day in 2012. Now the Welsh county are one win away from attending Finals Day on August 20th at Edgbaston and taking part in county cricket’s annual jamboree.
Glamorgan have never met Yorkshire before in Twenty20 cricket, but they have met before in the quarter-final stages of a domestic one-day competition, with the White Rose county travelling to Cardiff on July 29th, 1997. At the time the Welsh side were riding high in the County Championship having secured a place in the last eight of the 60 overs competition nail-biting two-wicket victory over Hampshire at Southampton with Pakistani fast bowler Waqar Younis hitting the winning runs with two balls to spare.
The match with Yorkshire proved to be another thriller, with Glamorgan slipping to 209/9 with 27 runs still required. But Waqar Younis and the teenage Dean Cosker calmly steered Glamorgan to their target in the final over and benefitted from Yorkshire’s profligacy with extras, with the Welsh county’s total being bloated by 14 no balls and 11 wides.
In all, Glamorgan have met Yorkshire on 43 occasions in one-day games with the Welsh county being victorious on 23 occasions and Yorkshire winning 18 times. Amongst the personal highlights for Glamorgan in these games was a fine 127 by Alan Butcher in the Benson and Hedges Cup match at Sophia Gardens in 1991, as well as a remarkable bowling spell by Geoff Holmes who took 5/16 in the Sunday League match at Swansea in 1985.