Glamorgan County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Glamorgan. Founded in 1888, Glamorgan held minor status at first and was a prominent member of the early Minor Counties Championship before the First World War. In 1921, the club joined the County Championship and the team was elevated to first-class status, subsequently playing in every top-level domestic cricket competition in England and Wales.
Glamorgan won the county championship in 1948 under the captaincy of Wilf Wooller, whose advocacy of high fielding standards was the key to beating stronger batting and bowling teams. Glamorgan was the unintentional venue for a piece of cricket history on 31 August 1968 when, during Glamorgan v Notts at Swansea, Gary Sobers hit all six balls in an over from Malcolm Nash for six. Glamorgan won the championship again under Tony Lewis in 1969 and Matthew Maynard in 1997.
Lewis is the only Glamorgan player to captain England in Tests, when he became the first Glamorgan cricketer to lead an England tour abroad to play series against India and Pakistan in 1972–73. Maynard, who retired at the end of the 2005 season, was one of the most successful batsmen in first class cricket over the previous 20 years. The 2005 captain, off spinner Robert Croft, proved effective on England tours, and was a useful pinch hitter in List A one-day games.
On 20 April 2006, the ECB announced that Glamorgan Cricket had been granted the right to host an Ashes Test against Australia in 2009. The following month, Cardiff Council’s Planning Committee approved Glamorgan’s plans for the stadium redevelopment, and during the summer, demolition work began at Sophia Gardens. In mid-September, the old pavilion was used for the final time during Glamorgan’s Championship match against Gloucestershire.
By January 2007, construction had begun on the new pavilion complex, the new grandstand on the site of the former pavilion, and the Media Centre complex at the Cathedral Road end. Building work continued throughout the summer of 2007, during which Glamorgan staged a number of home matches away from Cardiff. The contractors, Carillion, handed the new stadium over to Glamorgan Cricket on 17 March 2008, and on 9 May, the Welsh county played their inaugural match in the completed stadium — a day‑night fixture against Gloucestershire.
Sophia Gardens became a Test cricket venue in 2009 when the First Test in the Ashes series against Australia was played there. In 2021 Glamorgan won their first trophy for seventeen years, defeating Durham by 58 runs in the final of the Royal London One-Day Cup. They followed this up with a victory in the same competition in 2024, winning a shortened 20-overs-a-side game against Somerset by 15 runs.
Glamorgan were promoted into Division One of the County Championship in 2025 after finishing runners-up in Division Two.
From the Wikipedia article "Glamorgan County Cricket Club", available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
