Photo Credit – Glamorgan Cricket Archives.
2019 saw Glamorgan successfully stage a series of matches in the ICC Cricket World Cup but on the domestic front, If ever there was a season of two halves, this was it, with Glamorgan riding high in the Championship table after three impressive victories before falling away in the promotion race and enjoying a modest campaign in the T20 campaign with their sole success coming in the closing game at Sophia Gardens against Hampshire.
It may have been no coincidence that the second half of the summer coincided with the departure of Marnus Labuschagne on Australian duty. It had been a massive feather in Glamorgan’s cap to have secured the services of the promising Queenslander, and with a place up for grabs in the Ashes squad, he took the opportunity with both hands, scoring five centuries during the first half of the campaign, besides becoming the first player in the country to amass 1,000 Championship runs.
Marnus marked his debut with a maiden Championship hundred, against Northants in the season opener at Sophia Gardens. Billy Root, another new face in the Welsh county’s line-up also posted a hundred on debut before Kiran Carlson became the third centurion on the opening day of the season. Glamorgan then had the better of a draw in the following game against Gloucestershire, and the first Championship match at Spytty Park in Newport, despite being made to follow-on. Their riposte resulted from the first of several impressive partnerships involving Marnus with the Australian adding 231 for the second wicket with Nick Selman and completing his second hundred of the year before his leg-spin and the canny off-breaks of Kieran Bull posed problems for the visiting batsmen as they desperately clung on a draw.
Marnus largely played a watching brief in the first Championship win at Derby where victory was set up by some probing seam bowling by Michael Hogan and new signing Dan Douthwaite, acquired from Cardiff MCCU. Chasing 246 on the final afternoon, Glamorgan were indebted to a fine stand between Andrew Salter and Tom Cullen, who were each playing because of injuries to Bull and Chris Cooke, as they reached their target with two wickets in hand.
However, the new Australian wunderkid was much to the fore in the following game at Hove as Marnus made 182 against Sussex and shared a Club record second wicket stand of 291 with Selman to help Glamorgan salvage a draw. In the next game, a maiden double-century by Root was the highlight of a comprehensive innings victory at Northampton, with Marchant de Lange and Hogan also producing some hostile spells as they shared fourteen wickets between themselves. After draws with Derbyshire at Swansea and Middlesex at Radlett, Marnus played a match-winning innings of 82 against Gloucestershire as Glamorgan successfully chased a tricky target of 188 in 49 overs.
He followed this with centuries in each innings in the draw with Worcestershire at Cardiff and in the process equalled the Club record, set by Alan Jones, of six successive scores of fifty or more, but he failed to make it seven in the next match as Glamorgan lost heavily to Middlesex at Sophia Gardens. Further defeats occurred against Lancashire at Colwyn Bay as well as against Worcestershire at New Road before a facile 291-run victory over Leicestershire at Cardiff with Kraigg Brathwaite, the locum overseas batter from the West Indies, making an unbeaten 103 as a season which had promised so much ended with Glamorgan missing out on promotion.
As far as the white ball games were concerned, Glamorgan failed to progress to the quarter-final stages of either the Royal London One-Day Cup or the Vitality Blast. After three defeats in their opening One-Day Cup games, Glamorgan bounced back with successive victories over Surrey and Gloucestershire. Root made an unbeaten 113 and 98 in each, but the highlight of the latter, and what became a 74-run victory at Bristol ,was an outstanding 161 from Chris Cooke as he savaged the home attack. Unfortunately, Chris badly twisted an ankle a fortnight later against the same opponents at Newport and spent the next eight weeks on the sidelines. He returned for the start of the T20 competition but Glamorgan’s campaign in the Vitality Blast saw them not win a game until their fourteenth and final outing. They also tied an earlier game with Gloucestershire despite appearing to be in charge with the visitors needing 33 from the last two overs. However, some muscular blows by Andrew Tye, the burly Australian all-rounder brought the scores level off the final ball.