A Good Day
I spent all day today at the SWALEC stadium in Sophia Gardens watching yet another one-day match, this time between Glamorgan and Essex.
It was overcast early on, as you can see from the picture (which for some reason has decided to rotate itself).
Glamorgan won the toss and batted, but lost both openers cheaply. Ingram and Bragg then dug in and slowly tried to build a decent total. By “slowly”, I mean very slowly. After 10 overs Glamorgan had crawled to 26 for 2. The batsmen gradually began to assert themselves but were prevented by good fielding and bowling from really cutting loose. Then Ingram decided to take the bull by the horns. He hit three towering sixes (including one over the top of the pavilion) on his way to a brilliant 142. Still, Glamorgan’s total of 281 for 7 off their 50 overs didn’t really look enough…
Near the end of the Glamorgan innings I checked the football scores and discovered that Newcastle United had beaten Barnsley 3-0 while Brighton & Hove Albion let in a late equaliser at Aston Villa. That meant that Newcastle United won the Championship title. I celebrated in appropriate style in the Members bar between the innings.
Essex lost two very quick wickets – they were 2 for 2 at one point – but captain Alastair Cook and Varun Chopra put together a century partnership. When Cook was out, Ravi Bopara joined Chopra for another 100 stand.
After 41 overs Essex were looking comfortable on 214 for 3, needing just another 68 to win. Glamorgan’s bowlers had lost control at a similar point in their last match, so most of the spectators thought Essex would rattle off the runs without too much difficulty.
As so often happens in cricket, one incident turned the match. Chopra smashed a delivery from Meschede back at the bowler. It was a difficult chance and Meschede couldn’t hold on, but the ball ricocheted from his outstretched hand onto the stumps at the non-strikers end, with Bopara well out of his ground.
From that point the Essex batsmen came and went at regular intervals, as Glamorgan’s bowlers showed much greater discipline and common sense than on Friday. Aiming at the stumps has to be a good tactic in a situation when the batsman have to score at a reasonable rate: if the batsman misses going for a shot then the ball hits. Seems obvious, but it’s not what they did in the last game.
With 2 overs left, Essex had stuttered to 268 for 7 but were still favourites in my book. But with the first ball of the penultimate over De Lange clean bowled ten Doeschate (the last of four batsman to be bowled by full deliveries aimed at middle stump), making it 268 for 8. The pendulum had swung in Glamorgan’s favour. Or had it? Essex managed another 7 off the rest of the over.
Seven runs were then needed off the last over, with two wickets left. Hogan bowling, the crowd buzzing. First ball: 2 runs. Groans from the crowd. Then two dot balls. Cheers. Then an awful mix-up and a run out. Five needed off two balls. One wicket left. Next ball: the batsmen ran a bye to the wicketkeeper. Four needed off the last ball..
…but they could only run two. Glamorgan won by one run.
It was a very exciting finale, and a much-needed morale-boosting victory for Glamorgan. Well played both teams!
Oh, and when I got home I saw the news that France didn’t elect a fascist as President.
Yes, it’s been a good day. A very good day.
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In the Dark 
May 7, 2017 at 9:09 pm
“Oh, and when I got home I saw the news that France didn’t elect a fascist as President.”
No, they elected a banker. What happened to the socialist that used to post on this blog?
May 7, 2017 at 9:33 pm
You think instead that a socialist should endorse a fascist?
May 8, 2017 at 9:19 am
Her economic policies were pure socialism. Her flagship policy was anti-Sharia. I think I don’t understand what the word ‘fascist’ means nowadays.
May 8, 2017 at 9:29 am
You could try looking in a dictionary.
You could also note that her party was founded by Nazi collaborators.
I’ll grant that you could accurately describe her as a “National Socialist”, but that rather makes my point.
The French courts accepted that Madame Let Pen could be called a fascist, and I see no reason to argue with them.
May 8, 2017 at 9:41 am
The usual use of ‘fascist’ today is simply an insult used by people who identify as Left (but elect bankers…) Given that, as you rightly point out, the economics of fascism are socialist, things really aren’t so clear.
I’m more interested in policies than one-word labels, as the information content is higher. She threw the founder of the party, her own father, out of it.
Like the US election, a lousy choice of candidates is my view.
May 8, 2017 at 1:52 pm
Well, I don’t see how you can have a proportions of a president…
May 8, 2017 at 3:18 pm
Well, in the UK we don’t elect our Head of State at all, but then HRH does not have any executive power….
Any system is a trade-off between being fair yet allowing government to function effectively.
May 10, 2017 at 9:14 am
All along the campaign, I have found this line of the “ni-ni” proponents pretty annoying: working in and for a bank does not sound like a rational argument to reject a presidential candidate. Not more and not less than being a cheesemonger or a welder. Not only the other candidate is a fascist, but she also hardly ever worked (as a lawyer) and got both her wealth and her political position as an inheritance from a father whom she later ejected from the Nazional Front he created.
May 7, 2017 at 11:27 pm
It’s a good day when the world tips only 90 degrees!
May 8, 2017 at 11:38 am
I don’t really understand this. The picture is rotated on one browser but not on another. Weird.
May 8, 2017 at 2:40 am
So you finally saw a Glamorgan win, well done! I was listening to the last couple of hours on BBC radio this morning.
Colin Ingram has now made a hundred in each of his three One-day Cup (50 over) matches against Essex, as well as a T20 hundred against them at Chelmsford last year in a rain affected match. I’ve been licky enough to see two of these hundreds live.
May 8, 2017 at 2:47 am
—or lucky enough, even…
As you’re a Glamorgan member you should try to get to Swansea for one of the games there later this month, a very pretty though not very traditional-looking ground by the sea, where Sobers hit his 6 6’s in an over about 50 years ago, and where Glamorgan beat the touring Australians twice in the 1960s. It’s not too well-maintained now but there are some nice vantage points, and seats on the grass, and the local supporters run their own cheaply-priced bar!
I saw my first game of cricket there in 1975, Glam v Aus, and never visited any other ground until I moved to London for University in 1983.