Youth Cricket Update from Cat Miller
We finally got some sunshine at long last which made everything a little bit better last week in terms of groundworks, training and getting some eagerly awaited games on….or so we thought…
Monday night last week saw the U15s at home in a friendly at Ermont Way, their anticipated league opposition having conceded the original fixture. Keen to keep the boys playing, we organised a game against Witney Warriors who had also suffered with opposition teams pulling out of their pool.
In a closely fought game, the U15s were a bit below par with the bat, and also conceded a few too many runs in the field, so ended up losing by 7 wickets to a good Witney side.
Sadly, our U13s third round Cup game on Thursday was conceded by Peppard Stoke Row who couldn’t raise a team. They now face BNOCC in the quarter finals of this competition next week.
Last weekend saw two of our U11s teams play their scheduled games. Our softballers travelled to Kidlington and whilst the end result didn’t go their way, it was great to see some good performances from the team. With a largely ‘new to cricket’ team, Banbury softballers applied themselves well with some great fielding and learnt a great deal about field positions and trying to bowl straight. With the bat all performed well and some great attacking shots were played. Eventually they came up 32 runs short of Kidlington. A fantastic learning experience for the children. Special mention for some great individual batting performances from Jackson H.J and Lloyd D.
Our Super 8s team travelled to Great Tew for their game. The team suffered a defeat in the face of some good opposition. We had 4 or 5 of the team playing their first 20 over hardball game and one player playing their first ever hardball game. So all in all a great effort. Coaches reported that the team bowled and fielded really well - a bit more practice needed in fielding awareness perhaps. Our batters faced some familiar challenges but overall lots for the team to be proud about in the face of some good opposition. Well done to all who played and those who made the games happen.