2018 saw Glamorgan win just two Championship matches – their first and last in a campaign whose lowest point came at Hove where Sussex dismissed the Welsh county for 85 and 88 during the morning and afternoon sessions on the second day. The two-day defeat epitomised a summer where the batting consistently failed in the longer form and, for the second successive summer, no batter reached 1,000 runs for the summer.
They also endured a cruel run of injuries with the experienced pillars within their relatively small squad all being hit at various times during a summer which saw Glamorgan lose seven successive Championship games and win just one of their eight games in the Royal London One-Day Cup. Given the fact that the dressing room resembled, at times, the set of “Emergency Ward Ten”, it was to their credit that they remained in the hunt for a quarter-final place in the T20 Blast until the closing batch of group games, only for Sussex’s bowlers yet again break Welsh hearts at Hove as a hat-trick by Tymal Mills saw Glamorgan bundled out for 88.
This injury-ridden saga saw Michael Hogan, Timm van der Gugten, Craig Meschede, Shaun Marsh, David Lloyd and Marchant de Lange all side-lined for varying lengths of time, with the latter being the first to be injured as he sustained a season-ending hamstring injury shortly after a remarkable Championship match at Leicester where he had nearly helped Glamorgan pluck victory from the jaws of defeat. Chasing a target of 251, their batting had misfired for the second time in the game and at 139-8, another defeat seemed a formality.
Instead, it was the cue for a ferocious innings by de Lange, whose approach resembled that of an angry bear awoken abruptly from a deep slumber, as he struck out violently at every ball, racing to 50 from 32 balls with his volley of massive sixes swiftly taking his side closer and closer to the target. With good support from van der Gugten and Hogan, the impossible now seemed the achievable as the task dropped into single figures but with four runs required de Lange, attempting to strike his ninth six, was caught on the boundary at long-on and departed for a career-best 90.
The following week Hogan sustained a hamstring injury in the second One-Day Cup match and missed the rest of the tournament, whilst Craig Meschede sustained a calf injury in a 2nd XI contest and was ruled out for two months. All seemed well with the batsmen, especially Shaun Marsh who had re-joined the Welsh county for all formats after a successful time in the Ashes series of 2017/18 where his prolific batting had helped Australia to a series win. He continued his good form by scoring a century on his Championship debut at Bristol as Glamorgan defeated Gloucestershire in their opening game, courtesy of a helter-skelter chase in the final hour. but during Glamorgan’s first home T20 match against the Sussex Sharks, Marsh’s summer in Wales came to an abrupt and premature end as he damaged his left shoulder whilst diving for the ball on the boundary’s edge.
Photo Credit – Glamorgan Cricket Archives.
He duly returned home for treatment with fellow countryman Joe Burns signed as his replacement. But Burns damaged his back during his first appearance at Cardiff and after a further niggle during his second appearance at Cheltenham, he also headed back to Australia. David Lloyd was the next batter to be injured as he fractured a figure during a dramatic T20 match against the Essex Eagles at Chelmsford where, for the second successive summer, the Welsh county completed a last ball victory. Such a scenario seemed very unlikely as the visitors subsided to 110-8 chasing a target of 168, but Chris Cooke and van der Gugten added 61 in 26 balls, with Cooke striking a volley of massive sixes against the despondent attack before pulling the final delivery for four to clinch a stunning victory.
Photo Credit – Glamorgan Cricket Archives.
Colin Ingram was the next to be felled, in his case by a mystery virus which saw him hospitalized after an allergic reaction on the night before Glamorgan travelled to play Surrey at The Oval. Cooke duly led a hastily re-jigged side against the South London galactico’s and, despite the loss of their talismanic batsman and white-ball captain for 2018, Glamorgan maintained their unbeaten record in T20 cricket at the South London ground with Andrew Salter and Graham Wagg bowling frugal spells, whilst Kiran Carlson made a maiden T20 fifty and stole the headlines with a massive six onto the top tier of the pavilion as he effortlessly pulled Tom Curran.
There were two other standout achievements during 2018. First, Ruaidhri Smith ripped through Middlesex’s top-order in the T20 match at Richmond as he returned figures of 4/6 during a superb opening salvo whilst in the County Championship Usman Khawaja became the Club’s first-ever player to score centuries in each of his first three County Championship appearances with 125 against Warwickshire at Edgbaston, 126 in the game with Derbyshire at Swansea, and 107 in the match against Northants at Sophia Gardens.