After the Club’s dismal efforts during 1979, Ossie Wheatley and his committee did not shy away from taking remedial action. With Robin Hobbs having had knee surgery, Malcolm Nash was offered the captaincy for 1980 whilst gifted Pakistani batsman Javed Miandad was recruited from Sussex to bolster the batting. In addition Ezra Moseley, a young West Indian fast bowler also joined the Club, whilst the experienced pairing of batsman Norman Featherstone and seamer Allan Jones moved to South Wales with none of the youngsters in the 2nd XI being deemed quite ready yet for the step-up into regular 1st XI action.
In the opening Championship match of the season, against Essex at Swansea, it looked like the administrators had got things right with their winter recruitment as Javed marked his Glamorgan debut with an unbeaten 140 whilst Moseley, bowling fast and straight, claimed seven wickets as Glamorgan enjoyed the better of a rain-affected draw.
The next match saw their first Championship win since August 1978 as Gloucestershire were defeated by seven wickets at Bristol. Javed was again to the fore with another century whilst Nash played a captain’s role taking eleven wickets on the ground where four years before he had played in the Test Trial. His team also made a flying start in the one-day competitions with three successive victories in the Sunday League seeing Glamorgan to the top of the table at the end of May, whilst victories over Gloucestershire and the Combined Universities in the Benson and Hedges Cup briefly raised hopes of another quarter-final appearance. But Glamorgan failed to reach the last eight of the 55-overs competition and departed in the second round of the Gillette Cup as they lost to Sussex at Hove.
By the end of the summer, they were also back at the foot of the Sunday League, whilst their early season form in Championship cricket tailed off with heavy defeats against Surrey and Sussex, as Nash’s team ended up in 12th place. Only four games were lost, with a further thirteen ending in draws. Some could have ended in exciting run chases, but as Wisden’s correspondent astutely put it “Moving away from bottom position was a comfort for all concerned, especially the new captain who, feeling his way cautiously, was attempting to achieve the right balance between boldness and temerity.”
There was also much more solidity in the batting with four batsmen passing the 1,000 run mark in first-class cricket. Javed added a touch of class with 1,442 runs in Championship cricket, at a healthy average 0f 55.46, whilst Alan Jones made 1,378 runs in the county games, including a career-best and unbeaten 204 against Hampshire at Basingstoke as the veteran left-hander proved it was premature to think about retirement as he posted his fiftieth three-figure score for the Club.
Photo Credit – Glamorgan Cricket Archives.
The visit to the Harrogate Cricket Festival to take part in the Tilcon Trophy also saw Glamorgan, under the shrewd captaincy of Barry Lloyd, win some silverware. Their first match, against Yorkshire was rain-affected but Alan Jones and John Hopkins put bat to ball to see the Welsh county to victory by virtue of a superior run-rate. Kent were their opponents in the second and final game, but they were restrained by some accurate bowling by Moseley and Geoff Holmes, with the latter then making an unbeaten 87 as Glamorgan successfully chased their target and won the competition with the all-rounder deservedly winning the Man-of-the-Match Award.
There was further good news at the end of the season as the 2nd XI won the Second Eleven Championship under the captaincy of Kevin Lyons. With Robin Hobbs recuperating from his cartilage operations, they also had the services of the former England spinner in more games than expected. Besides being a bonus, his presence helped the development of the young colts, who had time and space in the 2nd XI for most of the summer rather than, as in previous years, being fast-tracked into county cricket before they were really ready.
Glamorgan’s 2nd XI also included sixteen year-old batsman Hugh Morris, a product of Blundell’s School and Cardiff CC who had won a place in the England Schoolboys team, plus Greg Thomas, a young pace bowler from Trebanos who had made his first-class debut the year before in the match against the touring Sri Lankans at Swansea. Both were to go on to playing a role in raising the fortunes of Glamorgan in subsequent years, as well as winning Test caps for England, as they moved closer and closer towards a new era of success.
