Something has changed at Glamorgan and the benefits could have wider repercussions beyond Wales.
For years Glamorgan were perceived by some to be the “runt of the litter”, as my colleague Scyld Berry described the Welsh Fire last year in the context of the Cardiff Hundred franchise.
It was a reference to the malaise around cricket in Wales: the low crowds, poor performances and lack of local flavour to their Hundred team. It would also have been a fair reference to the complete lack of England recognition for their players since Simon Jones played in the 2005 Ashes.
The club are now on the up, emerging as contenders on the field and in the business world. Promoted last season, Glamorgan won their first game in the top division for 21 years when they beat Hampshire two weeks ago and followed it immediately with a tense, hard-fought victory over championship contenders Somerset.
A win over Warwickshire in this round will almost certainly mean they can focus on stability and growth in Division One rather than worry about relegation.
Steering the regrowth is Richard Dawson, the former Yorkshire and England off-spinner appointed head coach last year.
Dawson is one of those rare breeds: an English contender to succeed Brendon McCullum with the national side. Michael Vaughan, writing for Telegraph Sport this week, described Dawson as a “fantastic coach” and thinks he can be England’s Andrew McDonald, the low-profile Australia coach, who masterminded the Ashes win and the 2023 World Cup victory.
The superstar coaches with glorious playing careers are glamorous appointments for boards. But they are expensive to hire and easily lured away by franchise gigs where they can earn even more money with a lot less scrutiny. Few look or care deeper about the wider game beyond their team’s results.
McCullum is safe for now. He has a contract that sees him through to the World Cup in the autumn of 2027 but his standing is weak. It will not take much for the pressure to build.
Dawson left the England white-ball set-up as part of the clear-out when McCullum took over both roles in 2024 and wanted to slim down the coaching staff.
At the start of 2025 he joined Glamorgan, replacing the sacked Grant Bradburn, and steered them from bottom of the championship after three rounds last year to winning promotion and upsetting established Division One teams this summer.
He has blended a team of experienced campaigners with young, emerging Glamorgan talent. Asa Tribe and Ben Kellaway, both from the Cardiff University ranks, were the first Glamorgan players for 21 years to be picked by England when they went on last winter’s Lions tours. Tribe was a contender to open for England this summer until Emilio Gay eclipsed him with more runs.
Tom Norton, a teenager from Abergavenny, made history as the youngest bowler to take a hat-trick on first-class debut last week – dismissing three of the top four – in the two-wicket win over Somerset. Starting day four on 140 for five chasing 283 to win, the unlikely hero was New South Wales bowler Ryan Hadley, whose maiden first-class fifty took 231 balls as he steered his team to victory with the kind of anti-Bazball up-yours performance that will have thrilled mates back in Australia.
It is still early season, and a lot to play for in all formats, but Dawson’s growing reputation has been recognised by his inclusion recently on Rob Key’s County Insight Group – a collection of county coaches beefing up the connection between England and the domestic game. He worked for England Under-19s and the Lions last winter and if Glamorgan’s growth continues, can be one of those coaches who upends the notion there are no English contenders to coach the Test team.
He says the first challenge at Glamorgan was changing the mindset of the team, shaking up the lack of self-belief that stalked a club starved of success in red-ball cricket.
“I’ve said since day one, I’ve never turned up to a game and not expected to win. I always keep going on about continuing to develop and continuing to improve. Break it down hour by hour, even every half-hour block. How do we win those? I say to the lads how we look after and win those clinch moments in the game. Get through the back end of those, then we can put pressure back on the opposition.”
He doesn’t want to be drawn on England ambitions, understandably enough, but describes himself as a hands-on coach, loving that side of the job, something that may have gone out of fashion elsewhere. “I love the coaching aspect of it, so I don’t see that changing. I love asking questions of the players and posing challenges and getting the responses out.”
Glamorgan are an international ground with a Hundred franchise, which gives them an advantage as the English domestic game swallows the changing dynamic private ownership will bring. The Welsh Fire are 49 per cent owned by ambitious Indian-American IT businessman Sanjay Govil, who also has US cricket franchise the Washington Freedom in his portfolio, which gives them heft off the field too. Indeed, together with Govil they were bidders to buy the Rajasthan Royals IPL franchise that was eventually sold to the Mittal family for £1.1bn. Heady times for a club like Glamorgan.
Mark Rhydderch-Roberts was appointed chairman in 2023 and praises the late Hugh Morris for re-energising the club’s talent pathways by wrestling control back to Glamorgan and away from Cricket Wales. The lack of private schools in Wales, the sector which provides the bulk of English cricketers to the county game, he says is a handicap but to make up for it the club has focussed on university cricket. It has picked up funding of around £35,000 annually for Cardiff South Wales University Centre of Cricketing Excellence to provide support for men and women players at Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan University, and the University of South Wales. Tribe and Kellaway graduated through the university system.
Rhydderch-Roberts believes there is a place at the top table of English cricket for Glamorgan. “People have not clocked what is going on down here,” he says. “The culture has changed at Glamorgan. It is now about what we ‘can do’ rather than ‘poor little Glamorgan’. The Hundred has given us global reach. We were on the shortlist to buy the Royals. I didn’t see any other counties doing that.
“The problem for us is that only two per cent of children go to private schools in Wales and it is seven per cent in England. They do not play cricket in state schools in Wales. It is all through the clubs. The universities here get the importance of sport and that has been huge for us. We were very happy to take that on.”
One of the problems has been crowds at Sophia Gardens and that is a challenge the club hopes will be helped by the arrival of new joint owners in the Hundred which brings the funds for better marketing and the building of a brand. Ticket sales across the Hundred are down at the moment on where they were last year but it is early summer and money is tight. It will take patience.
Welsh Fire and Glamorgan have a big summer ahead. It has started promisingly and if results equal ambition, it could be a breakthrough year.