Derbyshire continue on their travels with a long journey to South Wales for their first game at St Helen’s, Swansea, since 2003.
Heritage Officer, David Griffin, looks at the 19 previous games to have taken place between the two counties at Swansea.
The two sides first met at Swansea in 1922 when Derbyshire won by the huge margin of 283 runs, thanks in the main to Bill Bestwick’s eight wickets in the match, backed up by runs from Cadman, Hutchinson and Storer.
In the subsequent 18 games, Derbyshire won six, Glamorgan won five, and the remaining seven games were drawn.
Derbyshire’s win by an innings and seven runs in 1981 was one of the more comprehensive, and notable for off-spinner, Geoff Miller, opening the bowling for Derbyshire in both of Glamorgan’s innings.
Derbyshire batted first and scored 320 with Kim Barnett top-scoring with an unbeaten 64, before Derbyshire’s spinners – Miller and David Steele – took a combined 15 wickets for 162 runs. Two weeks later, the very same Derbyshire eleven, won the NatWest Trophy Final at Lord’s.
In 1988, the game was ruined by rain on the final day after scorching heat on the first day had forced Glamorgan’s India overseas all-rounder, Ravi Shastri, to leave the field suffering from sunstroke.
However, despite the rain later in the match, there was still time for John Morris to make a superb 175, the highest-ever score by a Derbyshire player at Swansea, and one of three hundreds for the county; the other came from Arnold Hamer who made 120 in the win in 1956, and Charlie Lee who scored 104 in a drawn game in 1963.
The best innings bowling figures for Derbyshire is 7-58 by off-spinner Edwin Smith in the aforementioned victory in 1956, while leg-spinner Tommy Mitchell took 7-61 in 1930.
Both of those bowlers went on to take 11 wickets in the match – again, both records by Derbyshire bowlers against Glamorgan at Swansea.
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