The last ever junior match for this year group saw them triumph in style over Studley at Tanworth-in-Arden on Sunday. The sun finally shone and there was a large following for both sides.

Studley won the toss and asked Earls to bat first. Amy Weir and Ewan Marshall opened up and the scored ticked along as the openers bowled 6 no balls and a wide between them. Erskine eventually bagged Amy's wicket caught by Amos and Earls were 11-1. This brought man of the match Josh Craven to the wicket. A 54 run partnership between these two had helped enormously in the semi-final against Exhall & Wixford and they started well again. Josh was playing very fluently and Ewan was rotating the strike well before falling to Studley skipper Regan with the score on 46.

Earls had a little wobble as Elliot Weir fell for 6 but then the main partnership of the innings began as Joe Pietrafesa joined Josh. The pair put on 60 in 6 overs with both players hitting maximums. The boundary was pushed back so this was no mean feat. Earls lost wickets as they pushed on in the last three overs. Joe was bowled for 19 and Josh eventually caught for 56. Will Clews selflessly gave his wicket away for the team running for a second with James Thorne. Dan Dixon joined James and Earls finished on a competitive 132-6 off their 20 overs.

Studley had batted very well against us in the Group stages so we knew we had to be on our toes. Thankfully it was one of our best bowling and fielding performances of the year. All the bowlers bowled tight lines and frustrated the Studley batsmen making them play loose shots as the pressure built. We were excellent in the field with no byes from U12 wicket-keeper Ed Clews. There were good stops on the boundary from Dan, Amy, Jamie Edwards and Elliot forcing the batsmen to run everything. The boundary count was 9 to 2 in our favour which says a lot.

There were two wickets each for Josh, Joe, Matt Collins and James as wickets fell regularly and Studley fell further and further behind the rate. Josh bowled both openers and Ed caught the number 3 behind off Joe who also bowled No 5 Amos. That left Studley on 29-4 off the first 8 overs. Matt and James replaced Josh and Joe and shortly after Matt bagged the key wicket of skipper Regan caught very well low down at mid-off by Amy. A catch by Joe off Matt and then two clean bowled by James left Studley on 68-8 off 16 and needing a miracle.

Elliot made sure that didn't happen as he bowled the stubborn Rane and Dan finished off proceedings forcing White to pick out Amy again at mid-off for a convincing win.

Scorecard

A big thank you must go out to those players who helped us get through to the final but for various reasons sadly had to miss out. Emily Perrin, Will Perrin, Sardara Narotra, Lewis Smith, Tom Blake, Will Bicknell, Yash Machani, Alex Booker, Oli Bevan and Qasim Sohail all played their part and it was a shame that some had to miss out.

Lastly a thank you to all the parents who have supported this group since we started with just James and Elliot in 2010 gradually building the squad up over the years finishing with an excellent group of players.