It's nine years since Glamorgan last win a trophy, and few expect them to beat the star-studded Nottinghamshire in the YB40 final this weekend. However, full of one-day international cricketers they may be, but Notts have flattered to deceive throughout 2013, and are even flirting with relegation in the Championship.
The only current Glamorgan player in the side when winning the Totesport League in 2004, Mark Wallace was a youthful 22 and a recent member of the ECB Academy in Australia. However, the successful squad from the late '90s was beginning to break up. They were in the second tier of the Championship and the legendary batsman Matthew Maynard was in his last full season with the club, aged 38. However, they couldn't stop winning in the 45-over league and won it despite losing the last three matches!
Robert Croft was the skipper, often opening the batting as well as bowling some wily off-spinners. The middle-order was quite formidable, too, boasting Maynard, David Hemp and Mike Powell, who has just announced his retirement form the sport. Adrian Dale was a very useful all-rounder for more than fifteen seasons and Alex Wharf was good enough to win 13 ODI caps for England. Aussie Mick Lewis supplemented the seam attack of Wharf, David Harrison and Darren Thomas, and then, of course, there was Crofty who by then had put his international career behind him to focus on Glamorgan, for whom he went onto take more than 1000 first-class wickets.
I'd say there are similarities between the classes of 2004 and 2013, although Michael Hogan lifts the current bowling attack. James Allenby is as good an all-rounder as the Welsh side has seen for years, and Murray Goodwin is as sprightly a 40 year-old batsman and fielder as you could ever see.
So what about Nottinghamshire? While they have boasted a formidable squad in all formats over the past decade, winning a couple of County Championships, I was surprised to discover that you have to go back even further than 2004 to find their name on a one-day honours board. 1991, in fact. In those days, the Refuge Assurance Leagues, as it was then known, was a single 40-over league of 17 counties. Durham didn't join the big boys until the following season.
Actually, the 1991 Notts batting line-up featured a few big names, too. In the last game of the season, when their nine-wicket demolition of neighbours Derbyshire clinched the title, they opened with Chris Broad and the 41 year-old Derek Randall, followed by another ex-England opener and then club captain, Tim Robinson. Now a leading umpire, Robbo was a top-class batsman and only one Notts player, George Gunn, has scored more first-class runs for the county. Local boys Paul Johnson and Paul Pollard also scored shedloads of runs for Notts, although they weren't particularly one-day specialists in the way we expect to see these days.
On the other hand, overseas star Franklyn Stephenson was a brilliant performer in any type of cricket. Not quite good enough to break into the world-dominating West Indies side including Marshall, Garner, Bishop, Walsh, Ambrose et al, he nevertheless was instrumental in Nottinghamshire's 1991 success, not only with the ball but also as a beefy late-order batsman. Kevin Evans was an under-rated seamer and Eddie Hemmings was the leading spinner in that, and many other years. In fact he took almost 2000 senior wickets in a career spanning four decades, 80 of them in internationals. Like Chris Read in years to come, wicketkeeper Bruce French played for England but was not as good a batsman as his successor.
They were, perhaps under-achievers in the 1990s but will the current crop of Hales, Lumb, Taylor, Hussey, Patel, Broad, Swann and colleagues ensure the label doesn't stick? I hope not; this is one Lord's final when I shall be rooting for the underdogs, especially as I'm now a Cardiff resident. Come on, Glammies!
