After their six-wicket victory against the Essex Eagles on Thursday night at Cardiff, Glamorgan travel to Somerset for their next match in the Vitality Blast with the contest at Taunton on Friday evening, 3 June, scheduled to get underway at 1830 (writes Andrew Hignell).
This is the second time that Glamorgan have played against Somerset at Taunton at a time of royal celebrations as back on 29 July 1981 when HRH Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were being married at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the two counties were engaged in a Championship match at Somerset’s headquarters with Javed Miandad, the mercurial batsman from Pakistan, scoring an unbeaten 200.
The Welsh county have won four of their seventeen T20 games at Taunton but, as the list below shows, Glamorgan have not been victorious in this format of cricket on Somerset soil since 2017:
15 June 2016 at Taunton - Match Abandoned
13 Aug 2017 at Taunton - Glamorgan won by 1 run
12 Aug 2018 at Taunton - Somerset won by 29 runs
24 Aug 2019 at Taunton - Somerset won by 25 runs
1 Sept 2020 at Taunton - Somerset won by 8 wickets
19 June 2021 at Taunton - Match Abandoned
Glamorgan’s victory at Taunton in 2017 was a nail-biting affair as they won by one run after a maiden half-century by Nick Selman plus a nerveless display by their bowlers during the closing stages with Michael Hogan and Marchant de Lange stifling a late Somerset rally. Their reward was qualification for the quarter-finals of the competition in a summer which saw the Welsh county reach Finals Day at Edgbaston where they lost to the Birmingham Bears in the semi-finals.
The game at Taunton in 2015 at Taunton was also a close contest before Glamorgan won by three runs, thanks to Colin Ingram who posted an imperious 96 from 62 balls and Wayne Parnell who delivered a superb final over. With the home side needing twelve off the final over, Tim Groenewald on-drove the South African’s first delivery for four runs and, after a flurry of singles and a wide, Abdur Rehman was left needing to strike four from the final two balls. But Parnell yorked the Pakistani spinner before Max Waller failed to make contact with the final delivery.
The match at Taunton in 2004 was also the scene of Ian Thomas’ unbeaten 116 – his swashbuckling efforts came in Glamorgan’s seventh T20 match and after over 200 matches in the short format, Ian’s efforts still stand as the highest individual score for the Welsh county in Twenty20 cricket.