Glamorgan travel to Leicester for their next contest in the LV=Insurance County Championship with the Welsh county meeting the East Midlands side in the four-day contest at Grace Road which is scheduled to start at 1100 on Thursday, 27 April. (writes Andrew Hignell)
Leicestershire beat Yorkshire in their opening Championship match this season as they successfully chased a target of 389 on the final afternoon at Headingley. Their batters also enjoyed the better of a drawn contest a fortnight ago against Derbyshire at Grace Road. In contrast, the Welsh county have drawn both of their Championship matches so far this season with the weather intervening on the final day last week at Cardiff as Durham made Glamorgan follow-on for the first-ever time in Championship cricket.
David Lloyd, for whom this game at Leicester will be his 100th first-class appearance, will be hoping that his side can bounce back and reproduce their heroics from last year’s contest at Grace Road and a game which has gone down in the Club’s annals as one of the most remarkable in Glamorgan’s history with the Welsh county winning by an innings and 28 runs after Sam Northeast’s monumental 410* and a record-breaking stand of 461 with Chris Cooke as they amassed a record-breaking 795-5.
This gave them a lead of 211 runs with 65 overs remaining at lunch on the final day. However, it only took the visiting attack 58.4 overs to dismiss the shell-shocked Leicestershire batters for a second time. After Andrew Salter had extracted turn and bounce at the Pavilion End to claim a pair of early wickets, Michael Hogan dissected the middle-order during his second spell. The pace of Michael Neser was then too much for the lower order before Michael Neser, on his final Championship appearance of the summer, yorked Chris Wright before some joyous celebrations by the visiting fielders.
Glamorgan’s previous visit to the Grace Road ground took place in 2018 when the Welsh county lost a dramatic contest by three runs after a buccaneering innings by Marchant de Lange. Glamorgan had been chasing a target of 250 but slumped to 139-8 before de Lange, in the space of just 45 balls, put bat to ball with a salvo of fours and sixes. 56 runs were still needed when Hogan joined de Lange but runs continued to haemorrhage with left-arm spinner Callum Parkinson conceding 21 runs in an over as de Lange struck successive sixes, whilst overs from Varun Aaron and Gavin Griffiths also saw the ball speed to, and over, the boundary boards as the target, amidst growing tension, swiftly fell into single figures. Raine then returned at the Pavilion End with the gleeful de Lange depositing him straight back over his head for four before lofting the next delivery into Parkinson’s hands at long-on just as it looked as if the South African had struck the winning runs.
Leicestershire’s victory in September 2016, had also been quite dramatic and unexpected as the Welsh county, seemingly in sight of victory, lost six wickets for just ten runs in the space of 26 balls. The Welsh county drew their matches at Leicester in 2017 and 2015, with both Jacques Rudolph and Will Bragg posting assertive hundreds in the latter game.