Glamorgan's First County Championship — 1948

Welsh cricket had long been a poor relation of rugby and the Glamorgan club's finances were marginal. Wooller, charismatic and abrasive in equal measure, had served with the Royal Artillery in Singapore and survived three years as a Japanese POW (Changi).

Through August 1948 Glamorgan, Yorkshire and Surrey jostled at the top. Glamorgan's wins over Surrey at The Oval (21 August) and Hampshire at Cardiff Arms Park (25 August) settled the table.

Glamorgan had joined the County Championship in 1921 and finished bottom three times in the 1930s. Wooller, a former Wales rugby international and Cambridge cricketer, returned from a Japanese POW camp in 1945 and was appointed captain-secretary in late 1946.

His 1948 side relied on a small core: Wooller himself, Jim Pleass, Allan Watkins (the only Test player), Phil Clift, the spinners John Clay (50) and Len Muncer, the off-cutter Norman Hever, and the seamer Willie Jones. There was no first-class star batsman; Wooller drilled them in extreme close-catching practice. Travelling around the country in a small lorry, Glamorgan carried a large mangle and blankets in the hope of drying outfields if it rained.

With four games to play they led the table. They beat Surrey at The Oval on 21 August, then on 25 August at Cardiff Arms Park took a Hampshire side apart by an innings and 24 runs. Wooller and Watkins shared the bowling honours; the title was Wales's first.

“He gave the team a sense of purpose deriving from a mixture of rugby fervour, military strategy and his own remarkable personality.”

Glamorgan's professionals were paid bonus payments largely funded by a public subscription in Wales. Crowds at Cardiff doubled the next season. The county would not win the championship again until 1969.