Modern day cricket is often a run-fest where the bowlers and boundaries get a right hammering from the batting heavyweights. Here, in his latest column for Dai Sport, Richard Thomas remembers the part Glamorgan played in a watershed moment for the one-day game.
Time to get the anniversary bunting out again to celebrate another landmark moment in Glamorgan’s history.
This Dai Sport column has already made references this summer that it is two decades since the club raised the County Championship pennant. This week 15 years ago Glamorgan were also involved in a dramatic watershed moment in one-day cricket.
Because, on a sultry June day in 2002 Glamorgan played a Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy fourth round tie at The Oval which produced an incredible 867 runs in 99.5 overs. This was a notable glimpse into the future of what was to be possible in limited over cricket a whole year before Twenty20 cricket was rolled out by the England & Wales Cricket Board.
Glamorgan lost agonisingly by nine runs but that they made 429 in response to Surrey’s blistering 438 was incredible in itself. The tone for the record-breaking run-fest was Alistair Brown’s 268 from 160 balls which included 12 sixes and 30 fours. Acting Glamorgan captain Robert Croft, who himself scored 119 from 69 balls, said that day: “The way Ali Brown struck the ball is something I guarantee you that the people who were here today will never see again.”
That might have seemed the case at the time but since then the batting revolution that has transformed cricket, both Test and one-day, has been remarkable. To the extent, that the MCC is to introduce a new code of law this October restricting the width of bats to 40 millimetres with many bats currently 60mm wide. Compare that to 1905 (16mm) and 1980 (18mm).
The battle between bat and ball has, without doubt, generally been skewed in favour of the batsman which has seen the likes of Brendon McCullum, the now retired captain of New Zealand, and West Indian batsman Chris Gayle, torment opposition bowling attacks. Even Test cricket has been transformed as McCullum’s 54-ball century against Australia last year is testament.
Returning to the Oval 15 years ago the faces on the Glamorgan players and their body language at the halfway stage told its own story and faced with an asking rate of 8.78 an over infamously Angus Fraser, the former England seamer, suggested on BBC Radio Five that lunchtime that the best thing Croft’s team could do was get in their cars and get back on the M4.
It was sun hats off to Glamorgan that afternoon that they refused to roll over easily and got it down to needing 10 off the final two balls to win. That Glamorgan got themselves into an unlikely winning situation was down to Croft, David Hemp and Darren Thomas’s batting efforts.
Notably, Thomas conceded 108 runs from nine overs representing the worst spell in world limited-overs history. But he went some way to atoning for that scoring an unbeaten 71 from 41 balls which helped his side get close to the winning line.
A decade and a half later that June match in 2002 can be seen as a definite watershed in one-day cricket.
Surrey: I J Ward, A D Brown, M R Ramprakash, A J Stewart, A J Hollioake (Capt), R Clarke, J N Batty (Wkt), M P Bicknell, Saqlain Mushtaq, J Ormond, E S H Giddins.
Glamorgan: D L Hemp, R D B Croft (Capt), I J Thomas, M P Maynard, M J Powell, A Dale, M A Wallace (Wkt), S D Thomas, A P Davies, M S Kasprowicz, D A Cosker.