The U15 Indoor Cricket Team attended the University of Cambridge Sports Centre this week to represent Northamptonshire at the Regional Tournament after qualifying last term as best in the County. The competition was fierce with many of the greatest teams in the country competing for a spot at the National Final taking place at Lords Cricket Ground.
We were drawn against high quality opponents in our group; playing Spalding, The Leys and Kimbolton.
Our first match was against Spalding. We chose to field first and Abi S bowled a fantastic first over, taking three wickets with her first three balls. An excellent team performance lead to Spalding finishing the innings on 75-6. Katie F opened the batting and retired having scored 15 runs, this was followed by Charlotte D doing the same and a confident batting performance saw the girls finish the over with 108-2. A convincing win for Northampton.
The second game saw us face Kimbolton, a school we know well and for the first time in the whole competition, we lost the toss and were in to bat first. This seemed to impact the girls and a touch of nerves saw us lose three early wickets. Rather than demonstrating our usual aggressive batting style, the team chose a more considered approach which lead to a good build of runs, but the team finished the innings all out for 49. We knew we had a tough fielding act to follow but Northampton were confident in our ability to field well, and we did, taking 3 wickets and keeping Kimbolton’s score low. Unfortunately, we couldn’t quite do enough and Kimbolton won the game 66-49.
Our only hope was to win our final game versus our group leaders, The Leys. This was a very experienced side who had beat Kimbolton by 57 runs earlier in the day. Again, we opened the batting and had a positive start, communicating well to hit the ball and run to score ‘threes’ and playing bigger shots when possible for ‘fours’ and ‘sixes’. The team displayed a brand new confidence opening the batting and came together to achieve a potentially game winning score of 91. Northampton then took to the field, and played as a team to rally and stop extra runs. We took 5 wickets and slowed the rate of runs against some excellent batters. They were on for the win right up until the last ball where The Leys hit a three and stole the game.
A fantastic final performance from the girls, one they should be very proud of! We are looking forward to the U15 and U14s fixtures later on this cricket season and seeing what they can achieve there.
