Glamorgan dig in for draw after Derbyshire’s Luis Reece sets century record

Leus Du Plooy’s last game in charge of Derbyshire ended in gallant failure despite another Luis Reece century as their side came up four wickets short after setting Glamorgan a target of 384 to win on the final day in 70 overs.

Derbyshire had eight fielders around the bat in the chase for wickets but eventually called time one over short at 5.37pm as the game petered out into a draw with Glamorgan on 135 for six.

The South African batter is due to join Middlesex next summer and while trying to engineer a result in his final fixture at the club and earn a first win in LV= County Championship Division Two this year, he could not get it over the line. As a result, Derbyshire finished sixth in the table and Glamorgan fifth.

But there was some good news for the visitors in the shape of another excellent unbeaten innings from opener Reece. He made the Derbyshire record for the most consecutive fifties in first-class cricket his own as he plundered a fourth successive first-class century off the Glamorgan attack this summer.

That took him to his seventh successive half-century to overtake Leroy Wright (1905), Stan Worthington (1928 and 1935) and Peter Bowler (1992) as the Derbyshire record holders.

He is in very good company for batters who have scored seven or more successive 50s twice in their career – George Tyldesley, CB Fry, Tom Hayward, Wally Hammond, Don Bradman, Len Hutton, Bill Edrich, Bobby Simpson and Dilip Vengsarkar.

The personal milestones kept coming for Reece as he took his personal haul against Glamorgan this season to 590 in the championship and 659 in all competitions.

When he reached 71 he got to 1,000 runs in the season for the first time in his career and on reaching his latest century he became the first batter in the history of County Championship cricket to score four successive hundreds against the same county. There had been 51 instances of three in a row.

Swift progress

Resuming overnight on 68 without loss, and already with a lead of 217 runs after Glamorgan’s sporting declaration the previous day, the visitors made swift progress. Harry Came and Reece improved on their opening stand in the first innings of 80 to make 132 together before Came was bowled by Kiran Carlson.

Brooke Guest did not last long as Carlson picked up a second wicket to make it 146 for two and then Reece put on 88 for the third wicket with Du Plooy before Derbyshire declared at 234 for two.

Having to score at 5.5 runs per over to reach their target, Glamorgan got off to a sluggish start and barely improved. Zain-ul-Hassan and Eddie Byrom put on 48 for the first wicket before the former became spinner Alex Thomson’s fifth victim of the game when he was trapped lbw for 19 at the start of the 15th over.

Byrom was then bowled by Zak Chappell to make it 62 for two and then Carlson went lbw to Thomson and Chappell removed the dangerous Colin Ingram to send Glamorgan tumbling to 79 for four in the 38th over.

Chris Cooke and Dan Douthwaite batted together for 15 overs to anchor the rearguard action as Derbyshire took two more wickets but could not land the killer blows.