By Lilly B and Manpreet G, Year 7

On Tuesday 25th January 2022, the NHEHS Year 7 A team got the opportunity to go to their first indoor cricket tournament at Lord’s. This team consisted of Annika K, Elizabeth O, Hannah D, Joanna D, Lilia P, Lilly B, Manpreet G, Noushi H and Romilly C, as well as Lana G and Nishka P from Year 6.

Our exciting journey began early Tuesday morning with a walk to Ealing Broadway Station where we cheerfully got onto the Underground and immediately started nominating a Captain for the team to get the momentum started. The votes were very close, but in the end Manpreet was chosen as Captain to lead, support and encourage our team. 

We arrived at the Indoor Cricket Area at Lord’s with joyful smiles on our faces, a strong desire to perform well and a common goal of bringing home Gold for our Team & School. With this passion, we started warming up by doing sprints as well as bowling, catching and fielding drills. As adrenaline began rushing through our bodies, we also began preparing ourselves mentally for the upcoming game. Meanwhile, while waiting for our turn to play our first match, we observed our opponents carefully to understand their game, their strengths and weaknesses too. This played a crucial part in our success and the end result.

Our first match was against Latymer Upper School and we entered the court with a positive mindset and the aim to win, which is why we knew we had to play our very best as a team from the very beginning. After doing a toss, we were chosen to bat first and we started out extremely strong from our first two batters all the way to the last ones and throughout the team we managed to make 79 runs in the first innings. Then it was on to bowling and fielding. Our bowling was very accurate and we kept our fielding tight, which led to getting many wickets in bowling, fielding and keeping. After a strong consistent team effort in this match, we achieved a clear win and it gave us a taste of victory that laid the foundation for our game play and team spirit for the rest of the day.

In the second and third match, we also succeeded with amazing wins against Godolphin & Latymer B and Putney C. We won by quite a lot of runs in each match due to spectacular batting and bowling by every player of our team and some of us hit our first fours and sixes of the Tournament.

Our tactical play, good understanding of the game and strong will power helped us win all of our matches and we were through to the semi-finals against Putney High School’s A team. We were all very excited and determined to do our very best to secure a place in the finals. Despite the pressure, our team managed to perform exceptionally well with excellent batting and fielding again!

This win made us realise that our dream of winning was so close and one more win would mean that we could leave the tournament as winners if we could beat Godolphin & Latymer’s A Team. Little did we know that this match was going to turn out to be the most exciting and nerve-racking match of the entire Tournament.

From an early start, we realised that this was a good and experienced team with players from Middlesex. We began the match by bowling and in the first over their score was minus 10 due to several bowled and caught wickets and Godolphin & Laytmer finished their innings of batting with a score of 51. At this point their eyes and body language clearly expressed that they wanted to win this Tournament as much as we did and it was not going to be an easy game for us.

Determined to do our absolute best, we started batting and the first 3 pairs made 28 runs which was a relatively good base for the game considering what good a team we were up against. The last pair got us to 38 runs in at the end of the first over and there were five balls left along with a tremendous amount of pressure, as we needed 13 runs to win at this stage. We felt both nervous and excited at the same time, because we wanted to win really badly. At this stage, there was a complete silence at Lord’s as all players, teachers, coaches and spectators watched on with high hopes. This part of the match was electrifying, the last ball and 2 runs to win. We could hear our hearts pumping, since we were so close to victory and we could not back down now. Last ball bowled and we did it! We managed to win with two runs to a very strong opponent. Our perseverance and joint team efforts paid off and our team was presented with gold medals and certificates. We were extremely proud of all we had achieved throughout the entire day and the result was evident, Gold for the U12 NHEHS Cricket A Team.

This was a great experience for our team and a brilliant start to our cricket venture together. The Lady Taverners Indoor Cricket Tournament truly helped us bond as a team and taught us the value of supporting each other and working together as a proper team. Our team is very proud of what we have achieved on the day and at the same time, this experience has also given us an opportunity to look into areas that we can work on to become an even stronger team to achieve more victories. This was just the beginning of our journey together as a cricket team.