On a beautiful day at Sophia Gardens, the likely victors of this game appear to have been established, as Glamorgan built a 117 run first innings lead and then reduced Leicestershire to 158/7 in their second innings. Throughout the match, Leicestershire have contributed to their misfortune, with three run outs in their first innings, dropped catches and 19 no balls when they came to bowl. At the same time, Glamorgan have fought their way into a winning position by maintaining high standards with the bat and ball.
Resuming on 305/5, Glamorgan lost Andy Gorvin in the second over of the day, but at 311/6 they trailed by just 9 runs. The scoring rate had dropped and progress was slow, as they set about building a lead. The fourth batting bonus point came up at the end of the 96th over. Chris Cooke was then bowled by a classic left armer’s delivery from Callum Parkinson, clipping the top of off stump, straight after reaching his half century. At lunch, Glamorgan had reached 389/7 from 110 overs, failing to get the last batting point.
Michael Neser was out soon after the restart, but James Weighell then struck some lusty blows and was last out, having scored 34 of 39 balls. Glamorgan finished on 437, a first innings lead of 117. A painful statistic for Leicestershire was the concession of 64 extras.
When Leicestershire came out to bat, the Glamorgan bowlers were not able to extract much lateral movement with the new ball, but Leicestershire were soon two down thanks to a strangle down the leg side to dismiss Sam Evans and a fine delivery from Michael Neser that caught the edge of Rishi Patel’s bat. At 15/2 Leicestershire supporters would have had concerns, but Hassan Azad and Louis Kimber took them to tea without any further problems, chipping away steadily at the deficit.
Coming out for the evening session Leicestershire, at 76/2, were 41 behind and hoping to get ahead without further hiccoughs. However Neser had other ideas and produced another snorter of a delivery to bowl Kimber for 37. Azad was still there and hoping to marshal the remaining batters, as he had done in the first round against Worcestershire. He and Wiaan Mulder looked comfortable and had reduced the deficit to 11 when David Lloyd brought himself on for his first bowl of the match and promptly took his first wicket of the season, Mulder edging through to Cooke. Then in Lloyd’s next over he captured the key wicket of Azad, Marnus Labuschagne taking a sharp catch in the slips. At 115/5 Leicestershire’s fate looked sealed and it worsened when Neser trapped Steel lbw for 18. Then in the last over of the day Harry Swindells shouldered arms to an in swinger from Weighell.
Leicestershire will have their work cut out to set a defendable total when they return for day four.
