Having beaten the Foxes, it’s the Bears who will be Glamorgan’s opponents in their semi-final in the NatWest T20 Blast on Finals Day at Edgbaston on Saturday, September 2nd, with the game being the first of the day, starting at 1100.
After their victory this week against a team from the East Midlands, Glamorgan can now turn their attention to a side from the West Midlands after the Birmingham Bears defeated Surrey in the last quarter-final on Friday evening in an incident-packed and high-octane contest at The Kia Oval to clinch a place at their own headquarters next Saturday at what has become the biggest day in the county cricket’s calendar.
The Birmingham Bears duly emulated Glamorgan by defeating Surrey at The Kia Oval, but whereas the Welsh county won by six runs after batting first in their game on August 4th, the Bears won by six wickets after batting second and successfully chasing a target of 204. Earlier in the evening Jason Roy and Aaron Finch had launched the home side’s innings with a boundary-laden powerplay adding, in all, 98 from 54 balls before the wickets tumbled and the scoring rate slowed. After some early batting fireworks of their own, the Bears were seen home by captain Grant Elliott and Colin de Grandhomme who duly added 63 as the Birmingham-based side completed the highest-ever run chase in the knockout stages of the competition.
But there may be no home comforts for the Bears on their own stamping ground next Saturday as the form book shows that Glamorgan have a decent recent record against them having won the last four encounters between the two teams, whilst the Bears, who finished in third place in this year’s Northern Group, were last victorious over the Welsh county in a Twenty20 game at Edgbaston eight years ago. In that contest in June 2009, the side, known then as simply Warwickshire, won by four wickets as Rikki Clarke and Ant Botha scored the winning runs with seven balls remaining.
Glamorgan’s run of four successive victories against the Bears - spans the period from June 17th, 2012 to July 6th, 2013 during which time they recorded successive home and away doubles over the West Midlands side, winning two rain-affected games (as the Welsh Dragons) in 2012 under the Duckworth-Lewis Method by five runs at The SSE SWALEC, and by 22 runs at Edgbaston, before winning both games in 2013, firstly by four wickets at Cardiff and then by eight wickets at Rugby School.
In the latter game at the home of the oval-ball game, it was Michael Hogan who took the honours as he claimed 3/11 in a typically frugal spell to restrict the Warwickshire Bears to 126/8 in their 20 overs, before Mark Wallace struck an unbeaten 69 to wrap up an emphatic victory for the Welsh county with fourteen balls to spare and with eight wickets in hand, thereby equalling the same margin of victory which Warwickshire had inflicted on Glamorgan in their inaugural county match back in 1889, and all on the day of the Club’s 125th anniversary of their formation!
Glamorgan’s recent sequence of victories against the Bears in the short form of the game is in stark contrast to their opening encounters in the T20 competition, when Warwickshire were victorious in four of the first five games. Glamorgan’s sole victory during that time was at Cardiff in 2004 in their quarter-final encounter as the Welsh county won by five wickets as a third wicket stand of 118 between Matthew Elliott and David Hemp secured a place at Finals Day.