After their emphatic victory last Thursday night over Surrey at The Kia Oval, Glamorgan continue their campaign in the NatWest T20 Blast by meeting the Essex Eagles at The SSE SWALEC on Wednesday, June 1st with the contest scheduled to start at 6.30pm (Gates open at 5pm.)
Glamorgan have made as near a perfect start as possible to the Twenty20 competition for the past two years at The Kia Oval. In 2015 it was their batsmen who prospered in a contest which saw over 400 runs being scored, with Glamorgan posting their highest-ever total in the competition.
This year’s opening contest saw the bowlers prosper as Surrey were routed for just 93 as Timm van der Gugten posted the third-best bowling figures in the competition for the Welsh county. But it was not a one-man effort as all of the Glamorgan attack, including Dean Cosker, chipped in with the evergreen spinner coming even closer to becoming the first Glamorgan bowler to claim 100 wickets in the competition.
In contrast, Essex lost their opening game of the competition as they were beaten by Surrey at Chelmsford a fortnight ago. Despite a four-wicket haul by Matt Quinn, the seam bowler from New Zealand, Surrey were able to post what proved to be a match-winning total of 170/8 before Azhar Mahmood claimed four wickets himself for the visitors as the Eagles lost by eight runs.
Ravi Bopara grabbed the headlines last summer when the Eagles visited Cardiff for their Twenty20 match against the Welsh county, with the England international making an unbeaten 81 from 53 balls as he guided his side to a comfortable five wicket victory. Shaun Tait – who last year played for the Eagles - also took 3/28 as the home side were restricted to 144/8 in their 20 overs.
In fact, the Eagles are unbeaten in Twenty20 cricket on Welsh soil, having also been victorious in 2014, when half-centuries from Jacques Rudolph and Murray Goodwin could not prevent the Essex side from winning by seven wickets. It had been a similar story on the Eagles’ previous two visits to Cardiff in 2010 and 2011 when they won by nine and six wickets respectively.
Glamorgan’s sole victory over the Eagles in the Twenty20 competition came in their first-ever meeting at Chelmsford on June 11th, 2010 where a pair of feisty innings by Mark Cosgrove and Tom Maynard laid the foundations for a seven wicket victory. Since then Essex have won the last seven encounters between the two teams, so Jacques Rudolph and his team will be looking to end this losing sequence.