Batsman Will Bragg and fast bowler Timm van der Gugten are both included in Glamorgan’s Specsavers County Championship squad for the first time this year as the Welsh county prepare to face Nottinghamshire at The SSE SWALEC tomorrow (Friday).
Head Coach Robert Croft has otherwise kept the same team that drew with Leicestershire in the last red-ball encounter in April.
Bragg had been side lined with a back injury for Glamorgan’s first three County Championship matches, however returned to action during Glamorgan’s Royal London One-Day Cup campaign, where he scored 233 runs at an average of 38, which included a List A career best 94 against Kent at St. Helen’s.
Van der Gugten missed Glamorgan’s opening matches with a shoulder injury but like Bragg he played in Glamorgan’s One-Day campaign, picking up four wickets. He joins Michael Hogan, Marchant de Lange and Lukas Carey to make up the pace attack.
Despite a disappointing start to the County Championship season, Bragg believes Glamorgan can take the positives from securing two nail biting victories against Kent and Hampshire in the One-Day Cup and put them to use against a high-flying Nottinghamshire team who currently sit at the top of Division two with three wins from three.
“It hasn’t been the start in four-day cricket we would have liked, but cricket is a massive momentum game and we can grab some of that from the close wins that we gained over the last couple of weeks.
“Nottinghamshire are probably one of the stronger opposition we will face in the competition. We just need to go back to basics and make sure we do everything well as a team and not concentrate on what they do.
“First and foremost, we need to look at ourselves and produce the goods that we know we’re capable of doing and if we do that hopefully we’ll come out with a good result.”
Bragg was a key player for Glamorgan in the Specsavers County Championship Campaigns last year, hitting a career best 161* against Essex and finishing the season as Glamorgan’s top run scorer in the competition with 1,088 runs and looking to replicate that form this year.
“I’m at the age where I know my game and it’s just trying to recreate what I did last year.
“There’s nothing technically I’ve worked on. It’s just purely the mental side of the game now and making sure I create a game plan and go on with that.
“It would be nice to emulate last year and even go from there to get even more runs for the side.”
Glamorgan (13-man) squad to play Nottinghamshire: Rudolph (c), Selman, Bragg, Ingram, Cooke, Donald, Carlson, Lloyd, Salter, De Lange, Hogan, Carey, van der Gugten