Cooke Eager To Serve Up Glamorgan Double Helping

Glamorgan’s Chris Cooke is targeting the later stages of two limited overs competitions after Glamorgan went top of their Royal London One-Day Cup group on Wednesday night.

Victory over Sussex Sharks by 84 runs propelled Glamorgan to the top of the group – and they’re also sitting top of the NatWest T20 Blast South group after winning four games out of five in all competitions.

Cooke, whose innings of 80 off 67 balls – including five fours and three sixes – was the standout knock of the game, said Glamorgan are now eyeing the latter stages of both tournaments.

He said: “We’ve had a good month or so in all formats and we are a good white ball side now.

“People don’t think we’re the underdog anymore and the aim is to get into the knockout stages of these tournaments and maybe reach a final. We’ve laid a good foundation to go forward and push on now.”

Cooke also praised a collective effort in the field, after sharp catches were taken by Craig Meschede – off his own bowling – as well as Colin Ingram and Aneurin Donald in the deep.

Cooke added: “The big difference tonight was the catching – we held some 50-50 catches and they didn’t.”

Cooke’s partnership of 112 with Graham Wagg led Glamorgan to a formidable total of 302, which proved too much for the Sharks’ batsmen.

He added: “There was a platform already laid by Braggy and Aneurin and the more you batted, the easier it got.

“So, myself and Graham just gave ourselves a bit of time we thought we could really cash it at the back end.

“There’s nothing worse than having a couple of new batters coming in and trying to force the pace, so we invested some time into the innings and we knew we could catch up at the end.”

Cooke and the rest of the Glamorgan squad will now move into T20 mode when they travel to Gloucestershire in the NatWest T20 Blast on Friday night starting at 6.30pm at the Brightside Ground.

Glamorgan’s next home match is against Middlesex in the Royal London One Day Cup on Tuesday, starting at 2pm.