24 Mar 2016 | Cricket
Captain Jacques Rudolph has returned to Wales in time to lead Glamorgan against Gloucestershire at The SSE SWALEC tomorrow in the first pre-season fixture for the Welsh county ahead of the 2016 season.
The 45-overs red ball friendly on Good Friday, is scheduled to get underway at 11am. Glamorgan have picked a 13-man squad, with all expected to play a role in the match, with two players inter-changeable for bowling duties.
Gloucestershire have already staged a one-day friendly with Oxford MCCU on St Patrick's Day as well as a two innings and Twenty20 contest against Somerset at Taunton this week, but Glamorgan will hope to hit the ground running with a number of players having tasted action during the winter.
Both James Kettleborough and Andrew Salter played grade cricket in Sydney, whilst Aneurin Donald enjoyed a spell at the Darren Lehman Academy in Adelaide, as well as being part of the England under-19 World Cup squad.
Craig Meschede plays his first game for the club since he made last season's year-long loan a permanent move and Jack Murphy is included having missed large parts of last season due to injury.
The Glamorgan squad spent 10 days at Desert Springs Resort, in Spain as part of their training programme, so the forthcoming three pre-season games will see the squad step up their preparations with Michael Hogan, Colin Ingram and Timm van der Gugten still to arrive in the UK.
It's been great to come back from our pre-season training camp in Spain at Desert Springs and get to practice outside, said 2015 Glamorgan Player of the Year Graham Wagg ahead of the game.
The Groundsman has done a fantastic job to get us out there so early, it's almost as if every year that ticks by we get out there sooner and earlier in the year.
The boys are really looking forward to the game tomorrow, it's been glorious all week and hopefully will be the same tomorrow.
(New Head Coach) Rob Croft will bring experience to his new role. He's probably got the most amount of experience that I've ever met in a bloke that's played the game. His stats speak for themselves in terms of how good a player he was and now he's changed roles to a coach and he's worked behind a couple of coaches in last few seasons and now steps up to Head Coach and all the boys are behind him.
My goal this year is to better last year. I'm still feeling fresh, the S&C work we do with Tom Turner is phenomenal and I'm feeling fit personally, it's the fittest I've ever been on paper which can only help so I'm looking forward to the first game.
It is free entry for all for all three of the Glamorgan warm up fixtures with entry to the Stadium via Gate 5.
Glamorgan: J Rudolph (c), J Kettleborough, W Bragg, A Donald, C Cooke, D Lloyd, G Wagg, C Meshede, M Wallace, A Salter, R Smith, J Murphy, D Cosker