Glamorgan gain first win of season against Derbyshire

It was a game that provided splendid entertainment on a good pitch where 1431 runs were scored and that was the perfect advert for four day championship cricket.

Although Glamorgan stuttered in their run chase, losing three wickets in mid innings for 20 runs, skipper Jacques Rudolph guided them to victory with his patient innings.

Earlier, Derbyshire had taken their second innings score to 536, their highest against Glamorgan, before they were all out at 1.15pm.

Bill Godleman and Matthew Critchley put on 113 in 26 overs, with Godleman scoring 106, his sixth century for Derbyshire, before he was well caught by wicketkeeper Mark Wallace down the leg side off Graham Wagg.

He was Wallace’s ninth victim in the game, equalling the club record set by Colin Metson in 1995.

There was little resistance from the Derbyshire tail, as Glamorgan were left 196 to win from a minimum of 62 overs.

Wallace and Nick Selman gave Glamorgan a positive start, scoring at four an over, but Selman was reprieved in Ben Cotton’s second over when he edged him between first and second slip to the third man boundary.

Cotton bowled a probing opening spell, but it was Shiv Thakor who made the immediate breakthrough when he trapped Selman leg before with the last ball of his first over with the score on 52. Nine runs later, Glamorgan lost their second wicket when Will Bragg played over a ball from Palladino which hit the top of the off stump.

Worse was to follow when Wallace, in the final over before tea, swept Wayne Madsen’s off spin to backward square leg, and in the first over after the interval, Aneurin Donald, the first innings double centurion, chipped Will Davis to midwicket without scoring.

Rudolph and Lloyd then settled into their productive partnership, with Rudolph, who has been short of runs this season, playing every ball on its merit, while Lloyd punished the bad ball, once striking Will Davis for three successive boundaries until he was dismissed leg before, sweeping at Madsen.

Three runs later, Matthew Critchley dismissed Graham Wagg, and Glamorgan still needed 39 more runs to win, but Rudolph and Craig Meschde calmed Welsh nerves- Rudolph scoring an undefeated 51 with Meschede striking 36 from 22 balls, including a six that struck a passing bus.

He then struck another maximum to win the game, as Glamorgan gained 24 points from the win to Derbyshire’s three.