Glamorgan visit the historic College ground at Cheltenham for their next match in the LV=Insurance County Championship as they meet Gloucestershire in a four-day contest scheduled to get underway at 11am on Thursday 20 July. (writes Andrew Hignell)
A year ago this week Glamorgan began their record-breaking match at Leicester with Sam Northeast posting a monumental 410* which helped to keep the Welsh county in the promotion race until the closing week of last season. Twelve months on, the Welsh county are in the promotion race again with their rain-affected draw against Leicestershire at Cardiff seeing them rise up into fourth place in the table, besides still remaining unbeaten in the competition this summer. However, Gloucestershire currently languish in seventh place in the table and are still searching for their first victory of the 2023 campaign having lost three out of their last four games.
This will be Glamorgan’s first visit for a Championship match to Cheltenham since 2017 when they lost inside two days by ten wickets after 25 wickets had tumbled in bowler-friendly conditions on the opening day. On the second day, Liam Norwell delivered a probing spell at the College Lawn End to return the exemplary figures of 6/38. His efforts meant Gloucestershire were left with a modest target of 135 and with less assistance from the surface for the bowlers, Cameron Bancroft and Chris Dent posted trouble-free fifties as they saw Gloucestershire to an emphatic victory.
In contrast, the Welsh county had been victorious thirteen years ago at Cheltenham, with Glamorgan winning by 176 runs during July 2010 as Robert Croft dramatically ended the contest with a superb hat-trick removing Vikram Banerjee l.b.w., before bowling Gemaal Hussain and then having another l.b.w. appeal upheld against Steve Kirby.
In fact, Glamorgan have a decent record at the College ground, having had the better of a drawn game at the 1991 Cheltenham Festival, winning by two wickets in 2002, and then in 2006, recording a ten-wicket victory after Michael Powell had scored a magnificent 299. For a while, it looked as if the Glamorgan batsman might break both Steve James’ Club record of 309*, besides surpassing the 318* made by the legendary WG Grace at Cheltenham in 1876. But on 299 he was caught behind from the spin bowling of Ian Fisher. However, another outstanding bowling performance by Robert Croft, who claimed a thirteen-wicket match haul saw Gloucestershire dismissed twice, before some lusty blows from Brendan McCullum saw the Welsh county home on the final afternoon, and just before the rains descended on the pretty Cotswold town.