Next season will see a minimum of 46 home matches at the Swalec Stadium, together with the Swansea and Colwyn Bay festivals, and supporters will be excited to sample the new ECB 40 League and Friends Provident Twenty20 competition.
The new 40-over competition will see Glamorgan come up against Lancashire, Surrey, Sussex, Somerset, Worcestershire and the new ECB Recreational X1. The new contest comprises three groups of seven, with six home and six away matches deciding who qualifies for the semi-finals. The final of the competition is the new showcase of the cricket season: a year-ending finale under floodlights at Lords on Saturday 18th September.
Supporters will be extremely pleased that all Glamorgan’s home matches in the new competition will be played on a Friday evening or Sunday afternoon spread out across the whole season.
The hugely successful Twenty20 Cup is back and has been expanded into the Friends Provident T20, with each team now playing eight home and away fixtures over the course of June and July. Counties are split into in two (North & South) pools of nine with the top four sides qualifying for the quarter-finals and the winners progressing to Finals Day at Hampshire’s Rose Bowl.
Six of Glamorgan’s home T20 matches will be played under floodlights on Fridays and Saturdays and S4C will also be screening five matches live.
Glamorgan will also be battling for promotion in the Liverpool Victoria County Championship Division Two and will be hoping their resurgence in this competition last season can transgress into the one-day arena also.
Festival cricket is back on the agenda; as well as hosting the traditional five-day events at both Swansea and Colwyn Bay, Glamorgan will be travelling to Cheltenham to play Gloucestershire in the world’s oldest cricket festival.
Chief-executive Alan Hamer was particularly pleased about the new fixture list: “Next summer’s fixtures provide fans with a great opportunity to come and support their team because many of the games fall on evenings and weekends. We have a lot to look forward to next season and have already signed some great additions to the team.”
Director of Cricket, Matthew Maynard, added: “I’m excited by the 2010 fixture list and delighted to see the return of cricket on Sunday afternoons which is more beneficial to the supporters.”
The full fixture list for 2010 can be found at: www.glamorgancricket.com
By Alex Winter
