Much has been written about the back of a length bowling and Glamorgan’s four-pronged seam attack last Thursday night at The Kia Oval, but credit should also go to long-serving Dean Cosker who claimed a couple of wickets with his wily left-arm spin on his first appearance in 1st XI colours during 2016.
Dean, plus long-serving wicket-keeper Mark Wallace, are the last survivors of Glamorgan’s first-ever Twenty20 team still to be playing county cricket. The match in question was at the Sophia Gardens ground in Cardiff on June 16th, 2003 as Northamptonshire visited Glamorgan’s headquarters to face a side also including Robert Croft, Ian Thomas, Mike Powell, Matthew Maynard, David Hemp, Adrian Dale, Michael Kasprowicz, Darren Thomas and David Harrison.
The game with Northamptonshire in 2003 saw Dean claim his first scalp in the short-form of the game as he removed Australian-born all-rounder Jeff Cook. With 94 wickets currently to his name in Twenty20 cricket, Dean is rapidly closing in on becoming the first Glamorgan bowler to claim 100 victims in the short form of the game.
Having last summer overtaken Robert Croft’s tally of 87 wickets in Twenty20 cricket – the previous best for Glamorgan - Dean is now targeting a further six wickets to join the small and exclusive list of bowlers who have claimed over 100 wickets in Twenty20 cricket in England and Wales, a list which includes seam bowlers Yasir Arafat, Azhar Mahmood, Alfonso Thomas, Richard Pyrah and Graham Napier plus fellow spinners Danny Briggs, Samit Patel and James Tredwell.
With the signings of Dale Steyn and Shaun Tait, Dean Cosker’s success in Twenty20 cricket is a timely reminder of the important role which spin plays in the competition, especially in nullifying some of the big-hitting exponents, and these more subtle arts of bowling – which are all part of Dean Cosker’s repertoire – help to compliment the attack.