Glamorgan County Cricket Club have reached 89/3 at lunch of their two-day friendly with Gloucestershire County Cricket Club at the SWALEC stadium.
Glamorgan got their pre-season underway yesterday in a rain-affected opening day of their fixture with Gloucestershire.
The visitors reached 111/3 just after lunch before the heavens opened and play was brought to an end after just 35 overs.
Despite this less than ideal start to their pre-season campaign, the players and backroom staff at Glamorgan are pleased with their progress ahead of the season’s opener on April 6 against Surrey.
T20 captain Jim Allenby said: “We’re building nicely, we’re not ready right now but that’s good because we’re a few weeks out.”
Glamorgan reached the final of the Yorkshire Bank 40 last year but haven’t played in the first division since 2005 and promotion this year is the main aim.
“One-day cricket is important and we want to get to finals but a club like Glamorgan want to be in the first division,” Caerphilly-born head coach Toby Radford stressed the importance of getting back into the top flight.
“Clearly four-day cricket for a county that I think represents the whole country, so it’s a national team in many ways, I think deserves to be a first division team so that’s a big aim for us,” said the former West Indies World T20 winning coach.
Radford pulled the players in earlier than ever before this winter for pre-season with the promotion push to the first division firmly in the forefront of his mind. “Winning in four-day [cricket] is about the mind-set and how you approach the game. We’ve done a lot of work technically with the players in the winter, they’ve had a lot of one-to-one coaching,” he said.
“They’ve done a lot more work this winter but they’ve got to be accountable when they walk out onto the grass,” the former West Indies coach added.
Glamorgan proved a much stronger force in the limited-overs format of the game last season, reaching a Lord’s final for the first time in 13 years losing to Nottinghamshire.
They impressed in the T20 before an uncharacteristic meltdown meant they narrowly missed out on the quarter finals. Radford admits his squad is better equipped to compete in one-day cricket again this season.
“The way the squad is set up its probably more suited to one-day cricket if I’m honest, in many ways we’ve inherited last year’s squad, we haven’t brought in any new players other than Jacques Rudolph who’s coming in.”
Rudolph, a former South African international, has an impressive test match and first class record and he will be hoping his experience and talent can push Glamorgan into the promotion race come the business end of the season.
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