Rudolph Ready To Attack Foxes

Jacques Rudolph believes Glamorgan are in good shape ahead of their Specsavers County Championship curtain-raiser against Leicestershire on Sunday.

A solid pre-season, saw the Welsh County play friendlies against Somerset and Gloucestershire, as well as the draw against Cardiff MCCU earlier in the week.

Captain Rudolph says preparation went well, but is keen for the real matches to begin, with Rudolph’s side looking to make a fast start to their Division Two campaign.

He said: “I think our preparations have gone really well, we’ve played quite a few games and I think it’s fair to say our batsmen are all in good touch and most of us have all had valuable time in the middle.

“In terms of being ready for the first game, we’re not far off – it might just be a case of tweaking one or two things.”

Glamorgan meet Leicestershire on Sunday in a fixture the Welsh County won last season, but the Foxes have made a number of improvements to their batting line-up over the winter.

But Rudolph was confident Glamorgan’s bolstered bowling attack could take the required 20 wickets to get off to the perfect start.

He said: “Even last year they (Leicestershire) had a good batting line-up, but on the flip side to that we’ve made a couple of new signings ourselves We’ve got Timm van der Gugten and Harry Podmore to boost our bowling attack.”

With a long county season ahead, Rudolph was mindful that his team remain as consistent as possible throughout the season, but admitted it would be ‘massive’ to begin the campaign with a victory.

He added: “It’s massive if we can build some momentum over the first six games that will give us a good opportunity to compete for the top spots.

“We want to start off well. We beat them here last year and they guys will take a lot of confidence from that.

“In my experience of playing county cricket you always go through peaks and troughs so it’s going to be important when we potentially lose games, that we bounce back

Leicestershire captain Mark Cosgrove said: “Our aim has to be to go up, we’ve named a squad of 13 and it looks really strong.

“We have one of the strongest squads in the competition, so our goal has to be to get out of Division Two. We’re going to play aggressively and we’ve learnt a lot, so we’re looking to move forward.”