Glamorgan County Cricket Club

Nickname: Criced Morgannwg

Team Country: England

Team City: Glamorgan, England

Founded (Year): 1888

Home Ground: Sophia Gardens

Coach: Matthew Maynard

Captain: David Lloyd

Forms of Cricket: First-Class Limited Overs Twenty20

Glamorgan County Cricket Club: overview

Glamorgan County Cricket Club is one of the 18 county clubs in England and Wales. It represents the county of the same name in Wales (the original name is Morgannwg). The club’s emblem is a blooming yellow narcissus on a white field.

Glamorgan County Cricket Club: origins

Glamorgan County Cricket Club was founded in 1888 and has long been a regular participant in the Minor Counties Championship. The status of the first class was assigned to the Welsh only in the early twenties of the last century, and since then they have not missed a single draw. Currently, the club remains the only first-class representative of Wales in the County Championship and confidently holds the brand.

Despite the geographical remoteness, the inhabitants of Wales got acquainted with cricket in the XVIII century (so, in particular, information about the match that took place in Swansea in 1780 has been preserved). However, it took about a hundred years before the local natives decided to create their own club. GCCC was officially founded, as already noted, in 1888 at a meeting held at the Angel Hotel (Cardiff).

After a little over thirty years, the Welsh finally decided to apply for membership in the County Championship, becoming the seventeenth club in the list of permanent participants. They played their first match at this level in May 1921 against Sussex, winning by a margin of 23 runs. However, they failed to stay on the wave of success: after winning another match, Glamorgan County Cricket Club fell back to the bottom of the standings and, at the end of the season, received a wooden spoon.

Glamorgan County Cricket Club nowadays

Glamorgan County Cricket Club took more than twenty years to get on a par with more experienced and titled teams. The long-awaited rise came in the second half of the 40s, when the club was headed by the legendary Wilf Wooller – the brightest of the all-rounders in the history of Wales.

Interestingly, Wooller was one of the few athletes who successfully combined careers in several disciplines at once. So, in particular, back in the early thirties, he established himself as a good rugby player: having failed the Latin entrance exam at Cambridge, he decided not to waste time in vain and joined the North Wales Schoolboys, and then the national team as part of the 1933 qualifying cycle.

However, Wooller left a much more noticeable mark in cricket. In the mid-30s, he was finally able to enter Cambridge and very soon made his debut for the university team in a first-class match against Sussex. The Welshman’s performance was so convincing that three years later, GCCC captain Maurice Turnbull offered him a place in the team.

Shortly after the end of the war, Wilf leads the club to a first-class championship for the first time in history. For several years, he remained the core of the squad and its main symbol. However, unfortunately, he never got to play in test matches for the national team (business commitments prevented him).

Subsequently, Glamorgan County Cricket Club won the County Championship twice more – in 1969 and 1997, respectively. In the first case, Tony Lewis led the team to the title, in the second – Matthew Maynard. Interestingly, Lewis is still the first and only representative of the Welsh club, who led the England national team in the framework of an overseas test tour. Maynard, in turn, was one of the most successful and sought-after batsmen at first-class level in his generation.

The last big star in the Glamorgan County Cricket Club was off-spinner Robert Croft, who proved himself, including at test level in the mid-noughties. Subsequently, the club’s results deteriorated markedly: currently the Welsh are in the second division and are fighting for a return to the top. In the near future, there are plans to expand the Sophia Gardens home ground to the size of a super stadium (in official documents, we are talking about increasing the number of spectator seats to 17.5 thousand). They are actively promoted by ex-player Hugh Morris, who took up the position of executive director in 2013. By the way, it was under his leadership that a strategic program for the development of cricket in Wales was developed, followed by its transformation into the main summer game. It includes restoring game resources, nurturing your own talents and attracting new viewers.

The motto of the program is “Make Wales proud”.

Glamorgan County Cricket Club: trophies won and interesting facts

In addition to three wins in the County Championship, Glamorgan County Cricket Club has several other trophies on its account:

• So, the it has won the Sunday/National League/One Day Cup four times;
• Shared the Minor Counties Championship once;
• Won the Second XI Championship and Second XI Twenty20 twice.

According to club statistics, the best batsman in the history of Glamorgan County Cricket Club is Alan Jones, who scored 34,056 runs. The bowlers’ record for the number of wickets taken belongs to Don Shepherd (2174).