Review of the Season – 2007

September 2006 had seen the final Championship match at the old Sophia Gardens ground before the re-development began and soon after the end of the drawn game, the bulldozers moved in, whilst further demolition work took place during the Autumn months as the final raft of finance was secured from Allied Irish Bank. Carillion had also been appointed as the major contractors and by early January 2007 the foundations had been laid for the new pavilion complex and grandstand. Building work on these new facilities began shortly afterwards, whilst in May, work began on the construction of the Media Centre and the new seating areas at the Cathedral Road End.

This building work meant that Glamorgan led a peripatetic existence during the first half of the season before playing their four home Twenty20 matches under the floodlights at their new stadium. Three Championship matches were staged in Swansea, whilst two visits were made to Colwyn Bay, as well as a first-ever visit to Pembrokeshire with Glamorgan meeting Surrey at Cresselly, which with a population of 75, and just a dozen buildings could lay claim to being the smallest settlement to ever host a Glamorgan match. It was certainly something of a culture shock for the Surrey players, so familiar to the bricks and mortar of the London conurbation, and completely unaccustomed to having cross a cattle grid to enter the ground whose nearest neighbour was a dairy farm and a herd of Freisan cows! Yet despite the unfamiliar surroundings, and a six-hour journey by coach from The Oval, Surrey had the last laugh as their captain Mark Butcher anchored a successful run-chase on a day when Glamorgan had three opening bowlers, as Damien Wright – the Australian bowler – broke down with injury after four balls, with Jimmy Maher completing the over.

Given these injuries and omissions, Glamorgan bloodied a number of new faces during the summer with Tom Maynard, the prodigiously talented son of Matthew, having his first taste of Championship and one-day cricket. Indeed, on his maiden one-day innings against Gloucestershire at Colwyn Bay, it looked for a while as if young Tom would emulate his father’s achievement of scoring a century on his debut, but the young tyro was dismissed for 71, having left those present at the Rhos-on-Sea ground in no doubt that here was a young batsman who meant serious business.

James Harris, the teenage all-rounder from Pontarddulais also became the youngest player in the history of the County Championship to take a ten-wicket match haul, before shortly afterwards coming within 13 runs of being the competition`s youngest-ever centurion. His dramatic start to his county career had begun at Trent Bridge on 2 May as, still aged sixteen, he took his maiden wicket with his fourteenth delivery. Then on 18 May, just two days after his seventeenth birthday, Harris hit the headlines as his haul of 12/118 against Gloucestershire at Bristol saw him break Somerset’s Brian Langford’s record to become the youngest-ever player to take a ten-wicket haul in county cricket’s blue riband competition.

Three weeks later, Harris showed that he also had pretensions with the bat, as he shared a record ninth wicket partnership of 185 with Robert Croft against Nottinghamshire at Swansea. Ironically, Harris’ partner had been playing for the Welsh county before he was born, and in 2001 had signed the youngsters’ first-ever bat when the little lad went up to the off-spinner at Swansea to ask for his autograph! How different it was six years later at the same ground as Harris ended unbeaten on 87 to become Glamorgan’s youngest-ever batsman to make a Championship fifty, besides fending off a series of short balls from the visiting bowlers.

Overall, 2007 was another disappointing season – no batters passed the thousand run mark and just a solitary match in the T20 competition was won. All of the List A matches ended in defeat were lost, but amongst the gloom there were a few beacons of hope, including a maiden hundred by Ben Wright of Cowbridge CC and the England U19 team, whilst Gareth Rees, the 25 year-old opening batsman from Llanelli, confirmed the favourable impression created by some sober innings the previous year with hundreds against Essex and Derbyshire.

There was also some good news at the end of the season when it was confirmed that Matthew Maynard would be returning for 2008 as Cricket Manager, following Duncan Fletcher standing down from his role as England coach and a re-structuring of the coaching support for the national team. Within a few weeks, there were other signings including Matthew Wood of Yorkshire, Warwickshire left-arm swing bowler Adam Shantry, Middlesex all-rounder Jamie Dalrymple and veteran Australian seamer Jason Gillespie. With building taking place both on and off the field, a better season was anticipated in 2008.