Glamorgan travel to Leicester for their next contest in the Vitality 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 Friday, 24 May. (writes Andrew Hignell)
The Welsh county’s nerve-jangling defeat by two wickets on Monday evening against Middlesex at Cardiff has seen them slip down to sixth place in the Division Two table. In contrast, Leicestershire, who enjoyed a high-scoring draw against Gloucestershire at their home ground, remain in third place, ten points ahead of Glamorgan.
Last year’s match between the two teams at Grace Road saw Timm van der Gugten take 6/88 before Chris Cooke and Michael Neser added 211 in 65.1 overs for the eighth wicket as the game ended in a draw.
The contest in 2022 at Grace Road was 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 yorked Chris Wright before some joyous celebrations by the visiting fielders.
Glamorgan’s previous visit to the Grace Road ground had taken 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.