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Flying the flag: Welshmen, Watkins and Wharf at Glamorgan

The Glamorgan boys have a sense of a new, fresh start at Cardiff and the future looks very bright for them.

Ian Ward
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Glamorgan v Gloucestershire
FP TROPHY
2.30pm, Friday
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When you compare the start that Glamorgan have made to last season that constitutes quite a dramatic turn around in fortune.

Last year the team was completely nomadic because Sophia Gardens was being ripped down and started again which meant that they had to play the majority of their home cricket at out grounds.

Also with the bad weather throughout last summer they couldn't get the facilities to cover the pitches and the practice areas, and were really scrabbling around to get any decent practice in.

They were sort of a wandering side last year.

Sky Sports will be covering the first game to be played at the redeveloped Sophia Gardens on Friday, and I just get the sense that the players all feel more of a sense of belonging now that the new ground is complete.

It also looks like a bit more money has been made available to coach, Matthew Maynard for the playing staff budget - already they have signed ex-Australia bowler Jason Gillespie as their overseas player and have also brought in Jamie Dalrymple from Middlesex.

So they have injected a bit of new blood and the whole season has started so much brighter than last year as they have shown improvement already with a win and a draw from their two County Championship matches and an impressive win over Somerset, followed by a defeat to Worcester in the FP Trophy.

Fresh start

I was in Cardiff a few days ago interviewing Robert Croft for a piece that we will show in the interval on Friday, along with a behind-the-scenes look at the new ground.

Croft seemed pretty chipper with it all and was delighted with the redevelopment. The Glamorgan boys have a sense of a new, fresh start at Cardiff and the future looks very bright for them.

It's tough to pin down what their aims will be for the season - they will obviously want to win something, but I think with it being Maynard's first year in charge it will be more a case of setting some foundation blocks and continuing to promote Welsh cricket and Welsh players, which is a fantastic thing and they should be applauded for that.

I see this season as being a case of getting as much as they can from it to build for the future.

I don't think they will be contenders for silverware this year but when the likes of Dalrymple get bedded in, and there is a general improvement in the camp, then Maynard will have a better idea at the end of the season as to where the team is at and where they want to get to in the next couple of years. So it's slowly, slowly catchy monkey for them at the moment.

Ashes Test

They will be delighted to be competitive again, playing in a great stadium - which will, of course, be the venue for the first Ashes Test next summer.

That's a big fillip for them, not everyone is too pleased that Cardiff will host a Test match at all, let alone the first Ashes Test, but for them it's going to be huge.

Part of the reasoning behind developing the ground was to get international status in order to secure the future of Glamorgan as a cricket club.

They felt the only way they're going to be able to do that was to build this stadium, so it was a bit of a punt but it has worked. They spent nearly £10million on it but with Ashes Tests and one-dayers and all sorts of stuff that will take place at Sophia Gardens in the foreseeable future, and with a lot of business partnerships in place, the financial future also looks very bright.

Glamorgan want to invest that money into their cricketers, which of course is what it's all about.

And the new Sophia Gardens is great. What a difference from the old place! With a couple of other developments they've got planned they can take capacity up to 25,000-26,000.

Identity

At the moment it is a little soulless because there hasn't been a game played there yet, so it needs to create its own identity and history.

But the crowd will be close to the action, and there is a grandstand where the old pavilion used to be which rakes pretty steeply up and will create quite an amphitheatre.

It also has some nice character because they couldn't do too much down the river end so there are lots of trees which gives a nice feel between a multi-purpose stadium and a nice cricket ground.

The square has been moved but, weirdly, when I stood out in the middle with Robert Croft he said it actually feels like a bigger playing area and he's dead right.

There was a quite open space at the old ground and now that it is all closed in you would think that it would feel smaller but it doesn't, it's actually a decent sized playing area, certainly square although it is short-ish straight.

So the first game at this great new ground will be against Gloucestershire on Friday, a team who are more geared towards one-day cricket for the moment so it won't be an easy first match for Glamorgan at their new home, but they will be looking for a win on a historic day for a cricket club heading in the right direction.