Tournament Squad:

• Sophie Allberry
• Archy Lowe
• Kien Sohail
• Cerys Tippings
• Rosie Troughton
• Emily Ward
• Rosie Ward
• William Wort
• Bilal Zaman

A big thank you to Haris Sohail who coached the team on the day dealing with constant questions on "who's batting next", "can I bowl now", "who's the Captain" and "can I go for a wee"? He showed admirable patience despite it being a little like herding cats at times!

Our first "proper" game was against Knowle & Dorridge. Emily captained the side for the first match and lead from the front opening the batting with Will as we got off to a flyer with both hitting a couple of boundaries as we scored 27-1. The effects of watching on TV were clearly on view with a spectacular dive to make his ground on a sharply taken run from Will! The two Rosies were in next and continued the good work followed by Sophie and Kien with neither pair losing a wicket. Bilal and Archy finished for Earls but found themselves against K&D's best bowlers who made scoring tough. A couple of wickets left us on a creditable total of 235. The bowling pairs matched the batting pairs with Will and Emily restricting the opening pair to just four runs off their two overs including a wicket for Will. Sadly that was our last wicket and K&D won comfortably in the end despite some excellent fielding from all of the team. We were certainly the noisiest team throughout with loads of encouragement for each other.

Next up were Blossomfield. The skipper this time was Archy who marshalled his troops very well throughout as Bloss batted first. He stuck to the same order of bowling as before and despite us not taking wickets we restricted Bloss to 250 off their 8 overs with some very good fielding by all the team including sliding one-handed stops on the boundary. They'd also listened well to Haris after the last game who talked to them about not throwing in hard when the batsman was already home which had cost us a couple of overthrows that went for four. There was none of that this time and good evidence of backing up as they took in what he was teaching them to watch out for. All the batting pairs recorded positive scores with only one wicket from a direct hit run-out. It was very tight though with the scores matching through overs five to nine. The last pair of Bilal and Archie needed seven to win off the last over which started brilliantly with a classical cover drive all along the floor from Archy, a thing of beauty to an old traditionalist! It came down to Bloss needing a wicket to win off the last ball and Archy played a perfect forward defensive to keep it out! Marvellous stuff and a first win for our young side.

We met Moseley in a 3rd/4th place play-off and fair play to the opposition who showed us where have to get to with an excellent batting and bowling performance that saw them win comfortably. Rosie T was skipper for this last match and was put into bat by Moseley. It's fair to say we struggled with their extra pace and bounce but there were still some brave performances and only two wickets fell to bowled or caught and then two more to run-outs as we tried to push for runs. The girls in particular were fired up by one or two silly comments about girls playing cricket and soon made the batsmen eat their words with a clean bowled from Sophie and a direct hit run out from Emily plus excellent quick thinking from Rosie T that lead to another runout by Will. The Moseley batsmen proved too strong though and cleared the ropes on several occasions for victory.

An encouraging first appearance for our newest players who all seemed to enjoy the experience. Thank you to all the parents for their support and Haris for coaching the side. Next up is a trip to Old Edwardians on the 17th June.