Derbyshire fall short of victory on the final day of the season

Luis Reece struck another century taking him into the record books as Derbyshire were unable to bowl Glamorgan out on the final day’s play in Cardiff.

Despite having eight fielders around the bat in the chase for wickets, Derbyshire eventually called time one over short at 5.37pm as the game petered out into a draw with Glamorgan on 135 for 6.

Leus du Plooy tried to engineer a result in his final fixture at the club and earn a first win in Division 2 this year, but he couldn’t get it over the line. As a result, Derbyshire finished sixth in the table and Glamorgan fifth.

But there was some good news for the visitors in the shape of another excellent unbeaten century for opener Luis Reece. He made the Derbyshire record for the most consecutive fifties in first class cricket his own as he plundered a fourth successive first-class century off the Glamorgan attack this summer.

That took him to his seventh successive half-century to overtake Leroy Wright (1905), Stan Worthington (1928 & 1935) and Peter Bowler (1992) as the Derbyshire record holders.

It also matched his previous best haul when playing for Lancashire and put him in very good company for those batters who have scored seven or more successive 50s twice in their career – George Tyldesley, CB Fry, Tom Hayward, Wally Hammond, Don Bradman, Len Hutton, Bill Edrich, Bobby Simpson and Dilip Vengsarkar.

The personal milestones kept coming for Reece as he took his championship haul against Glamorgan this season up to 590. He also made 69 against the Welsh county in the One Day Cup to take his overall total against them this summer to 659.

When he reached 71 he got to 1,000 runs in the season for the first time in his career and on reaching his latest century he became the first batter in the history of County Championship cricket to score four successive hundreds against the same county. There had been 51 instances of three in a row.

Resuming overnight on 68 for 0, and already with a lead of 217 runs after Glamorgan’s sporting declaration the previous day while still 149 runs adrift, the visitors made swift progress. Harry Came and Luis Reece improved on their opening stand in the first innings of 80 to make 132 together before Came was bowled by Kiran Carlson.

Brooke Guest didn’t last long as Carlson picked up a second wicket to make it 146 for 2 and then Reece ploughed on to his latest century as he put on 88 for the third wicket with skipper Leus du Plooy. Derbyshire declared at 234 for 2, setting Glamorgan the task of scoring 384 to win in 70 overs.

Having to score at 5.5 runs per over to reach their target, the Welsh county got off to a sluggish start and barely improved. Zain Ul-Hassan and Eddie Byrom put on 48 for the first wicket before the former became spinner Alex Thomson’s fifth victim of the game when he was trapped LBW for 19 at the start of the 15^th over.

Byrom was then bowled by Zak Chappell to make it 62 for 2 and when Carlson went LBW to Thomson in was 72 for 3. Chappell removed the dangerous Colin Ingram to send Glamorgan tumbling to 79 for 4 in the 38^th over.

Chris Cooke and Dan Douthwaite batted together for 15 overs to anchor to rearguard action. Derbyshire took two more wickets, but couldn’t land the killer blows.