There’s something about the second week in May for Glamorgan.

Before last weekend’s round of the County Championship, Glamorgan had not won a match in 13 red ball games.

You would have to go back to the same time last season, the fifth round of the County Championship Division Two in early May, to find Glamorgan’s last win in red ball cricket.

In that contest, it was Australian overseas Michael Neser who fired his side to victory with runs and wickets against Worcestershire.

Fast forward to 2024 and, thanks to a club-record 315-run partnership between vice-captain Kiran Carlson and Colin Ingram, along with wickets from Mir Hamza and Andy Gorvin, the Welsh county is celebrating a rare win.

Having survived a brief wobble as West Indian quick Jayden Seales ripped through the Glammy top order in the first hour of Day Two, the home side dominated the encounter, thereafter, building a first innings lead of 133 and then bowling Sussex out cheaply.

The scenes as Billy Root flayed Aristides Karvelas through mid-wicket for the winning runs showed a team that really needed that victory to get their season going in a positive way.

Coach Grant Bradburn stressed in a preseason interview with Sportin Wales that “it doesn’t matter how many games we lose this season, it’s how many we win.”

“We’re very confident in playing the game to win and sometimes that means risking losing,” said Bradburn.

“It’s about getting 20 wickets in the longer format, and we will set up our team to do that and rely on our batsman, if that means going in with one less batsman but with a properly balanced team, clearly intending to take wickets then that’s what we’ll do.”

Taking wickets has been difficult this season, even with the addition of Hamza and leg-spinner Mason Crane.

Before last weekend’s victory, Glamorgan had bowled their opponents out just twice in four games, conceding totals of 519 vs Yorkshire, 605 vs Northamptonshire, and 655 vs Middlesex.

It is worth pointing out that winning can be hard to come by in Division Two, where bowling is weaker than batting across the board.

Before this round of matches where Glamorgan and Gloucestershire picked up much needed wins, those two, coupled with Derbyshire, had won a single game between them in their last 55 red ball matches.

This speaks to the importance of Mir Hamza.

The left arm seamer has taken a few games to get going in unfamiliar conditions but looked like the international calibre bowler he is against Sussex, ending with match figures of 7-104.

The Pakistani international blew away the Sussex top order, before Gorvin cleaned up the middle and lower order with the help of Crane.

Bradburn has shuffled his seam bowling pack this season, with Hamza and James Harris the only ever-presents, and Gorvin, Dan Douthwaite, Jamie McIlroy, Brad Wheal, and Craig Miles all rotating in and out to varying degrees of success.

With that in mind, having Hamza settled and used to English (or Welsh) conditions will be vital with two very winnable games left in this block of Championship games against Middlesex and Leicestershire.

With the imminent arrival of Australian international Marnus Labuschagne, the team will be bolstered by the world’s number 12 ranked batsman who has averaged 55.52 with eight centuries in 26 matches at Glamorgan.

The situation seems clear, right? Hamza and Labuschagne play as Glammy’s two overseas players for their net set of games.

Well, that would mean dropping Colin Ingram. The South African batter is a Glamorgan mainstay since first arriving in 2015 and is enjoying an extraordinary season so far.

Ingram has scored 637 runs in Division Two this season, topping the chart ahead of his captain Sam Northeast, despite batting two fewer times this season.

In eight innings, Ingram’s scores read: 132*, 30, 51, 82, 11*, 48, 113, and 170.

His three hundreds are unequalled in Division Two, with only Joe Clarke of Nottinghamshire in Division One equalling him on that number.

Even with the undoubted quality of Labuschagne, can Bradburn afford to drop either Ingram or Hamza with the form they are in?

“It’s exactly what we want,” Bradburn said of the selection headache he and his coaches now have.

“We want headaches from a selection point of view. Mark Wallace and I want some tough decisions to make, and we’ve got some, not only with the overseas professionals, but also, we’ve now got other guys putting their hands up now too.

“We’ll regroup, we’ve got to be mindful and keep bodies fresh at this point in the season. We’ve got a clear plan on how we want to approach the Middlesex game and put a team together specifically for Middlesex and the conditions at home for that game.”

Whichever combination Bradburn goes with, three does not go into two and one big name will have to sit out of the XI as his team look to build on their first win of the season and back up those strong words from the start of the season.