One-Day Cup: Lancashire crush meek Glamorgan in Neath

Glamorgan's Tom Cullen crashes into spectators as he attempts to catch a ball heading for six

Lancashire renewed their challenge for a place in the One-Day Cup knockout stages with an easy nine-wicket win over Glamorgan in Neath on Wednesday which put the holders out.

The visitors' seamers hustled Glamorgan out for just 177, with Tom Bailey's 3-22 leading an impressive attack.

Colin Ingram (54) and Joe Cooke (40) were the only real contributors.

Lancashire strolled to victory at 180-1 thanks to Luke Wells' 50, plus 77 not out from Keaton Jennings.

The return of Glamorgan to a cricket ground outside Cardiff for the first time since 2019 attracted a healthy crowd to Neath.

But a change of venue and four team changes, including the return of Chris Cooke after injury and a first appearance of the season for Ruaidhri Smith, failed to produce a reversal of Glamorgan's sliding fortunes in the competition where they had performed so well the previous season.

It looked a good toss for Jennings to win on a green wicket in cloudy conditions and proved even more so when Bailey removed both openers with just five on the board.

Even the skilful Ingram was forced to work hard for his runs on a soft pitch against some accurate seam bowling, hitting just six boundaries as he faced 75 balls.

Ingram and Carlson (22) added 55 for the fifth wicket but it was Joe Cooke, smashing 40 off 34 balls, who gave the innings some token momentum.

With Liam Hurt, George Balderson and Danny Lamb claiming two wickets each and Will Williams also bowling tightly, there was no respite for Glamorgan as their lower order folded and they were bowled out with 29 balls unused.

Wells and Jennings faced no pressure on the scoring rate and put together a stand of 83 in 19 overs, Wells striking three sixes before being trapped lbw by home captain Kiran Carlson the ball after reaching his half-century.

One of Wells' sixes saw fielder Tom Cullen crashing into several spectators sitting near the boundary rope, thankfully with only minor injury apparently resulting.

All Lancashire's top three recovered from their ducks against Hampshire as Josh Bohannon joined Jennings in the victory dash.

Bohannon was left 48 not out when he pulled a four to the mid-wicket boundary with 14 overs to spare, showing the one-sided nature of the game.

Glamorgan director of cricket Mark Wallace told BBC Sport Wales:

"A disappointing result though it's great to be back playing in Neath, there's something special about outground cricket.

"We've shuffled the pack with our bowlers, a couple through necessity, but we didn't have enough runs on the board to be competitive.

"We got out of the blocks quickly winning the first couple of games, but we've come across some good sides since that. We've lacked a few runs and a few big scores.

"The red-ball season has been excellent and hopefully we can push on for promotion, but from a white-ball perspective it has been disappointing."

Lancashire captain Keaton Jennings told BBC Lancashire Sport:

"It was a really good win, a good toss to win, we bowled really nicely and attacked in good areas then batted really well.

"Wellsy started like an absolute steam train and it was good to have a partnership with Josh to finish it off.

"The conditions did favour us but having said that, we did exploit the conditions well with bat and ball. As a whole we were fantastic and I'm really proud.

"Once we're into the knockout cricket that's ideal, but it would be beautiful to go straight into the semi (by winning the group)."