1. SWALEC Stadium hosted the first ever one-day match between England and Wales in 2002. Wales won by eight wickets against a full England XI including the likes of Andrew Flintoff and Michael Vaughan. The result prompted calls for an independent Welsh Test team with Carwyn Jones, now the first minister of Wales, claiming it was “anachronistic” to have Welshmen trying to play their way into a team they’d just beaten so comprehensively.
2. Rugby may be the national sport but cricket is the oldest recorded team game in Wales. The gentry of Carmarthen were playing as early as 1783, while Cardiff, Pontypool, Usk and Newport all boasted clubs by the 1820s. Glamorgan County Cricket Club was formed in 1888 at the Angel hotel, a 10-minute walk from SWALEC Stadium along the river Taff.
3. Before it was SWALEC Stadium, Sophia Gardens took its name from Lady Sophia Rawdon-Hastings, wife of the 2nd Marquess of Bute, the aristocrat and industrialist who built Cardiff Docks. Lady Sophia was concerned at the lack of open space as Cardiff expanded during the 19th century. The park was laid out in 1854 and Lady Sophia herself opened it to the public four years later.
4. Cardiffians have enjoyed more than just sport in Sophia Gardens. The Cardiff and South Wales Horse Show was an attraction during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while in 1891 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show hitched its wagons on the site of the current cricket ground. Two years later came a visit from the celebrated Barnum and Bailey’s Travelling Circus and Menagerie.
5. The amateurs of Cardiff Cricket Club also played at Sophia Gardens until 20 years ago. The club’s youngsters take part in a sponsored walk from their new home to the stadium each year in order to raise funds for junior cricket.
6. In 1931, Glamorgan were so short of cash that several key players had to be released and the club’s very existence was in doubt. Captain Maurice Turnbull and secretary Johnnie Clay not only launched a successful fund-raising campaign, they were ahead of their time in developing one of sport’s earliest brand identities. Two years later, Glamorgan adopted Wales’s national flower, the daffodil, as the club’s emblem.
7. Glamorgan first played at Sophia Gardens in May 1967, a three-day game against the Indian touring team in which fewer than 90 overs were possible due to bad weather. However, it wasn’t until 1995 that the county could consider the ground their permanent home when they signed a 125-year lease.
8. Glamorgan have won the County Championship three times. At Sophia Gardens in September 1969, they beat Worcestershire by 147 runs to clinch the title, watched by an ecstatic crowd of more than 16,000. The Prince of Wales, not a noted cricket fan, sent the team a telegram urging them to “do it again next year”. Sadly, both the players and Prince Charles had to wait another 28 years.
9. West Indies legend Sir Vivian Richards played four seasons for Glamorgan in the early 1990s. Even though the “Master Blaster” was at the end of his career, he helped Glamorgan win the Sunday League and at Sophia Gardens in 1993 shared an unbroken stand of 425 with Adrian Dale in a Championship match against Middlesex. It remains the club’s highest ever partnership.
10. In 2007, Glamorgan batsman Mike Powell recovered from surgery on a blood clot which involved the removal of a rib. Doctors said he could keep the bone – and county officials then allowed him to inter it beneath the turf he’d trodden with distinction for 15 years. “People have had their ashes scattered,” quipped Powell, “but I am the only living person ever to have part of their body buried there.”
11. When SWALEC Stadium hosted the opening match of the 2009 Ashes series, it joined a unique group of centurions by becoming the world’s 100th Test match venue.
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