In the Dark

The Easter long weekend (Good Friday to Easter Monday, April 3rd to 6th, inclusive) this year coincided with the first round of matches in the County Championship. It doesn’t seem very long since the last season finished! I haven’t followed cricket very closely since I moved to Ireland, but I do look on the internet from time to time to see how Glamorgan are getting on. I follow them because I live in Cardiff. Glamorgan were promoted from Division 2 to Division 1 last season and at the time I wrote that I wouldn’t bet against them getting relegated so it was with some trepidation that I checked the scores on the first day of their first match against Yorkshire at Sophia Gardens.

As it happened, the weather was very bad in Cardiff on Good Friday and play started very late. When it did get going (in the late afternoon), the playing conditions were evidently very helpful for the bowlers, and Glamorgan slumped to 28-4 with a batting disaster on the cards. After that. though, they recovered well, though slowly, amid various interruptions for rain and bad light, to reach a respectable score of 302. Things looked even better when they bowled out the opposition for 226 for a first-innings lead of 76. They had a chance of forcing a victory on the last day, after a bold declaration before lunch, but didn’t have enough overs to bowl Yorkshire out for the second time – I think the batting conditions had probably improved over the four days – and the match was drawn. I think this was not a bad outcome given the position they were in on Day 1.

Looking at the County Championship Table I realised that scoring system has changed. It is still 16 points for a win, but it used to be 8 points each for a tied match and only 5 each for a draw. Now it’s 8 points for either a draw or a tie, so it is back to being a zero-sum game (in some sense).  I see that change was made back in 2021!

I was also initially surprised to see Glamorgan given only 1 batting bonus point despite scoring 302, but then I remembered that bonus points are only given for the first 110 overs of the first innings and Glamorgan had not reached 300 after that number of overs. The same reasoning also denied Yorkshire a bowling point, actually.

I admit however that I haven’t figured the rules for adding on time at the end of a day when play has been lost to the weather. I thought only a maximum of 30 minutes could be added in the County Championship on the first 3 days: with a scheduled close of play at 6pm, that would mean delaying the close to 6.30pm. Last night – i.e the end of Day 3 – play went on until well past 7pm. I suppose the umpires have discretion to carry over more of the deficit if the 30 minutes per day is not sufficient. In all, 61 overs were lost in this match anyway, despite the time added.

This entry was posted on April 6, 2026 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Cardiff, Cricket with tags Cardiff Weather, cricket, Glamorgan County Cricket Club, Sophia Gardens, Yorkshire County Cricket Club. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.