Over the years Glamorgan County Cricket Club has been well served by many top-class left-handed batters, including Emrys Davies, Alan Jones and Hugh Morris. As far as left-arm bowlers are concerned, Glamorgan have had the likes in recent times of Graham Wagg and spinner Dean Cosker, whilst Malcolm Nash, with 991 first-class wickets for the Welsh county, holds the record for the highest number of victims by a left-handed bowler.(writes Andrew Hignell)
The record-breaking and extraordinaty opening County Championship match at Lord’s has also seen the rarity of a pair of left-arm bowlers opening the bowling with Mir Hamza and Jamie McIlroy sharing the new ball against Middlesex, after the Welsh county’s first innings had seen southpaws Zain ul Hassan and Billy Root opening the innings before Sam Northeast's remarkable record-breaking innings of 335* as he posted the highest score in a first-class match at the historic ground.
Returning to the Club's bowling records, the previous occasion when two left-arm seamers had played together in a Glamorgan side was in 2013 when Graham Wagg and Alex Jones played against Lancashire at Old Trafford. However, thanks to research by Ben Davies, the Wales National Counties scorer from Port Talbot CC, the match at Lord's against Middlesex is the first time in a County Championship match that a pair of left-arm bowlers had opened the bowling for Glamorgan since Malcolm Nash and Alan Wilkins – now the County’s President – at Southampton in the match against Hampshire in September 1978. Alan also opened the bowling with Andy Mack against the 1979 Indians at St. Helen’s in Swansea.
In 1978 there were two occasions when Glamorgan began with three left-arm bowlers with Messrs Nash, Mack and Wilkins bowling against Somerset at Sophia Gardens as well as against Worcestershire at New Road. There were also seven other occasions when a combination of the three opened the bowling in first-class matches but, in each case, there was a right-handed batter opening the innings with Alan Jones being joined by John Hopkins