After years of dreaming that Wales would one day host Test Match cricket, the first day of Test cricket in Cardiff finally dawned on July 8th – and what a day it was as the Welsh capital became the world’s 100th Test Match venue. After an opening ceremony full of Welsh ‘hwyl’ and passion, play began on time at 1100 with Mitchell Johnson bowling the first ball to Andrew Strauss. It proved to be a cliff-hander of a game, with the contest going deep into the final hour on the last day.
Click here to read more about the inaugural Test Match in Wales.
Having made a sizeable bid, the five-day match generated around £6 million for the Club, equivalent to almost two years’ worth of revenue. With 1,700 temporary staff serving 152,000 pints of beer, and amongst other fine Welsh fare, 12,500 bacon roils, it was estimated that the Test also pumped an estimated £20m into the local economy. Glamorgan’s star was certainly in the ascent on the international stage and, later in the season, a further diet of high-profile games was confirmed, including an England-Australia One-Day International in 2010 plus back-to-back T20 games between England and Pakistan.
On the domestic front, new captain Jamie Dalrymple enjoyed something of a curate’s egg of a summer as his side, having shown sign of progress in limited overs cricket the year before losing 18 of their 29 one-day games with, by far, the Club’s best cricket coming in the longer form of the game, with the Welsh county being one of several teams who jousted during the final three weeks for promotion into Division One of the County Championship.
In tense conditions at their headquarters, they came within one wicket of defeating promotion rivals Essex as well as Gloucestershire, as both games went agonisingly to the final ball. Against Essex, Dean Cosker almost won the game with career-best figures of 6/91 and a first ten-wicket haul for the county, with the spinner left frustrated by some appeals to the umpires being turned down in what was a tense conclusion to a fine game of cricket. His colleagues had also been frustrated earlier in the season by bad weather, with the weather helping Derbyshire and Northamptonshire to survive, and victory in these games would have secured promotion
At an individual level, Gareth Rees – with 1061 first-class runs – was for the second successive summer, Glamorgan’s leading run-scorer in first-class cricket. The left-hander also played some important innings in one-day games, including a career-best 123* in the one-day victory over Essex, and fully deserved the award of his county cap in September, especially as he and Mark Cosgrove had shared a record stand of 315 against Surrey at The Oval. It was also very gratifying as well to see Rees enjoy several productive stands with another homegrown talent, Will Bragg, during the second part of the summer, with the fellow left-hander emerging as a high-quality top-order batsman in both forms of the game.
Photo Credit – Glamorgan Cricket Archives.
Tom Maynard also made his maiden one-day century – from just 57 balls – in the county’s NatWest Pro40 League match against Northamptonshire at Colwyn Bay The Rhos-on-Sea ground also saw Robert Croft post a Championship hundred, as he shared a rollicking ninth wicket stand with fellow centurion Adam Shantry which dramatically turned around the Championship game with Leicestershire in Glamorgan’s favour.
Jamie Dalrymple ended the summer with 1,009 first-class runs to his name after an outstanding first summer as Glamorgan’s leader, with his selection as captain of the English Lions side against Australia at Canterbury being a worthy reward, both for his batting and his captaincy skills. His tally of Championship runs, plus over 500 in one-day games also stood worthy comparison with the contribution of the Club’s two overseas batters in 2009. The combination of Herschelle Gibbs and Mark Cosgrove yielded a total of 1,023 runs in Championship matches, plus 447 in one-day matches. Cosgrove’s batting fireworks helped to lay the foundation of a thrilling run-chase in the Trophy match against Essex at Chelmsford, and in several Championship matches, he also threatened to play a sizeable innings. Gibbs’ stay with the county during July and August saw some high-class strokes from the South African, but his sojourn in South Wales was interrupted by a hamstring injury and he did not produce any match-winning performances.
Jim Allenby was also signed in mid-season, initially on a loan deal from Leicestershire, with the all-rounder being a useful acquisition to an attack where James Harris was easily the pick of the seam attack in the longer format and gained reward for his efforts through selection for the England Lions against Australia. To beef up the attack, and add an element of sheer pace, Matthew Maynard had also recruited Garnett Kruger, a 32 year-old pace bowler from South Africa, who became the Welsh county’s first-ever Kolpak registration and produced some waspish spells, especially on the quicker surfaces away from Wales.
Whereas there had been a string of rousing run chases in one-day games in 2008, the Dragons’ batters in 2009 rarely chased any targets with confidence. The opening match in the Twenty20 Cup, against the Somerset Sabres at Cardiff was a barometer of the batsman’s lack of confidence chasing a target. Needing 24 to win and with six wickets in hand, the Dragons innings dramatically went into freefall before ending up one run short of the target with their last pair at the wicket.
during Glamorgan’s T20 match with Gloucestershire in 2009. Photo Credit – Glamorgan Cricket Archives.
The experiences during 2009 of Ryan Watkins, the young all-rounder, highlighted the bitter-sweet nature of the Club’s campaign. He returned competition-best figures of 5/16 in the Twenty20 Cup win over Gloucestershire at Cardiff but failed to establish a regular place in the four-day side and failed to reproduce this bowling form in the other one-day competitions. He was duly released at the end of the summer which on the domestic front had promised much only to end up with a series of near misses and a collective feeling of frustration.