Cooke in charge on Glam’s return to red-ball cricket

CHRIS Cooke will captain Glamorgan for the first time in their Specsavers County Championship clash with Warwickshire at Edgbaston, starting today.

After a disappointing Royal London One-Day Cup campaign – where they lost seven out of eight games – the Welsh county turn their attention back to the red-ball competition, starting with a trip to Birmingham this weekend, before home matches against Derbyshire and Northamptonshire.

Glamorgan have been hampered by injuries and will be without County Championship skipper Michael Hogan, who is still returning to full fitness, while Marchant de Lange is still out with a hamstring injury and is undergoing rehab.

Hogan’s absence means vice-captain Cooke takes charge of a side set to include Connor Brown for the first time this season.

Brown impressed in the Royal London One-Day Cup, with the 21-yearold hitting a List A career-best 98 against Surrey, and he is joined by eight other Glamorgan Pathway players in the county’s latest 12-man squad.

Overseas signing Usman Khawaja also features in the squad following his early arrival to the county as cover for compatriot Shaun Marsh. The star batsman had initially signed for the Vitality Blast campaign, but has been drafted in early and is likely to make his Glamorgan debut.

“I wanted to come back to the UK at some point”, said Khawaja. “I gravitated towards Glamorgan because I knew the likes of Shaun Marsh and Michael Hogan were playing here, so for me it was all about playing somewhere that I would enjoy playing my cricket.

“When Shaun was selected for the Australia ODI side there was a chance to come over three weeks earlier to Cardiff. It was an opportunity for me to get my feet wet because I was ready to go cricket wise and help out in the four-day game.

Division Two leaders Warwickshire, who won three games in a row to go 15 points clear at the top before the white-ball break, have named a 15-man squad including former England men Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott.

First-team coach Jim Troughton said: “The guys played some excellent red-ball cricket before the break so it’s a question of getting back to those skills and hopefully carrying on the momentum which we had built up.

“It can be difficult switching from one format to another, but it’s the same for all teams. We have just got to be as well-prepared as we can be.”