Thomas The Destroyer

Championship best
By Edward Hall
May 15 2002

Darren Thomas put Glamorgan in control on the opening day of their latest County Championship match against Durham at Sophia Gardens. Thomas finished with 7 for 33 as Durham were bowled all out for 162.

Thomas’s superb figures, his career best in Championship games, continue a stunning start to the season for him. After picking up 3 wickets in the season’s opener against Derbyshire, he finished with 8 wickets against Worcestershire last weekend, and now has a decent chance to record his first 10-wicket match haul and to reach 20 Championship wickets for the season in the second innings.

Durham, after being put in, batted quite steadily early on with Gary Pratt and Martin Love denying the Glamorgan bowlers, after Michael Kasprowicz had got an early breakthrough. But it was Thomas who ripped through the middle order. Thomas took 5 quick wickets including the big one of Love, caught behind following a fluent 71 off 97 deliveries. An amazing spell was completed when he made sure that there was no recovery from the tail, picking up Davies and Killeen. Michael Kasprowicz’s dismissal of Andy Pratt was the only reason that Thomas did not go onto pick up the final 8 wickets of the innings.

Glamorgan’s overnight score of 117 for 5 in reply may look bad news, but with one of those wickets being Michael Kasprowicz’s duck as overnight watchman, there is still a lot of batting to come with wickets still intact. David Hemp (31) and Ian Thomas (39) took the score to 70, and Michael Powell’s unbeaten 30 steadied the ship after the loss of Hemp, Thomas and Dale in quick succession.