IT will be a case of Friends Reunited in Cardiff tonight as Jason Gillespie and Jacques Rudolph come up against their respective former counties in the NatWest T20 Blast quarter-final.

Yorkshire face Glamorgan at the SWALEC Stadium in their first T20 knockout fixture since 2012 when, on the same ground, they lost to Hampshire in the final.

The Vikings, perennial under achievers in this format, recovered from winning just one of their first seven North Group matches this season to surge into the last eight with six wins from their last seven.

Glamorgan, on the other hand, started their South Group campaign well before stumbling over the line with one win from their last five.

Yorkshire coach Gillespie faces the county where he spent his last season as a player in 2008, taking 41 wickets in 26 appearances across all formats.

He affectionately refers to the Welsh capital as “the Diff”, and said: “I can’t wait to get down there.

“It’s a great place to play cricket, and we’re looking forward to it against a good side. We’re pretty excited.”

Glamorgan captain and overseas player Rudolph was a massive fans’ favourite during his time at Headingley between 2007 and 2011.

He scored 5,429 runs in 68 first-class matches with 18 centuries and 22 fifties.

The left-hander posted 3,090 runs from 65 List A matches with nine hundreds and 19 fifties, while T20 was his weakest format with 710 from 39 appearances.

Rudolph has scored 184 runs in 13 Blast matches for the Welshmen this season.

“Jacques was an exceptional player for us, and it will be good to see him again,” said Yorkshire’s director of professional cricket Martyn Moxon.

“However, clearly, we want to beat him. He’ll also be wanting to beat us.

“But he was definitely a key player for us in his time with the club and a top man as well.

“He will know some of our players inside out, although he wasn’t around with others. With all the footage around these days, they’ll have done a lot of homework on us like we have with them.”

Last year’s winners Lancashire qualified for Finals Day through an away quarter-final. Like Yorkshire, they got on a roll in the latter stages of the group campaign and went all the way.

“It’s a huge game,” said opening batsman Adam Lyth.

“We’ve done well in the last six or seven games, spirits are high, and hopefully we can turn over a good Glamorgan side.

“Over the last few years we’ve not performed as well as we would have liked, but we’ve got ourselves on a roll now with a stable side.

“In the first few games in both the T20 and 50-over competition, we didn’t look like winning. But now that we’re over the line, we feel we can win any game in any situation.”

Yorkshire have included Adil Rashid in their 14-man squad, and he will play as he has not selected been by England for today’s Oval Test against Pakistan.

Young all-rounders Ryan Gibson and Matthew Waite are also named, and one is likely to make their first appearance of the season in place of Travis Head.

Yorks squad v Glamorgan (7pm start): Lees c, Bresnan, Carver, Gibson, Hodd w, Leaning, Lyth, Patterson, Plunkett, Rafiq, Rashid, Rhodes, Waite, Willey