Looking ahead to 2017 #1: The longest season on record

23 Dec 2016 | Cricket
Supporters of Glamorgan County Cricket Club have much they can look forward to during 2017 with a rich diet of international cricket, including games in the ICC Champions Trophy, an International Twenty20 fixture between England and South Africa, plus an extensive programme of county cricket, including a ground-breaking floodlit County Championship match at the Welsh county’s headquarters in Cardiff.

Indeed, the forthcoming summer is set to be the longest first-class season on record, running from March 28th until September 28th. The first-class season gets underway with a three-day contest against Cardiff MCCU at The SSE SWALEC with the game against the students forming the earliest- ever start to a domestic season, besides being the first time that Glamorgan will start and finish a first-class game in the U.K. before the end of March.

 

The previous earliest game was Glamorgan’s contest in 2012 which started on March 31st at The Parks against Oxford MCCU. The match saw Mark Wallace score an unbeaten 122 to post the earliest-ever hundred on record for the Welsh county.

 

The long-serving wicket-keeper also shares - with Jim Allenby, Colin Ingram and Chris Cooke - the record for the latest hundred in a season having made 139 against Surrey at The Oval in 2009. Both of these records could be erased as the 2017 season goes down in the history books as the longest-ever in the county’s domestic history.

 

Further features, looking ahead to some of the highlights of 2017, will appear over the Christmas and New Year period.