By Minna W and Georgia S, Year 8

On Thursday 24th March we travelled to William Perkins School to take part in the area tournament for the Lady Taverners Indoor Cricket Competition. This is a National Competition and this was the Local Middlesex Round, consisting of the outer Middlesex boroughs of Barnet, Ealing, Richmond, Hillingdon, and Brent. We were the winners from the Ealing Borough.

With an experienced team, we warmed up with confidence doing various catching drills with coach Mickey and Miss Nicholas, and then working on our batting and bowling. Many of us play hardball cricket, so it takes us a little while to get used to the indoor softball.

In the first game we played St Michael’s School from Barnet, who in the warm-up we could see had some confident batters. We won the toss and chose to field first. Georgia (captain) took to bowl first and got a wicket on her first ball! One of their strongest batters was out! Strong bowling from Minna, Manpreet and Lily meant we kept the opposition to an extremely low running score, they got 14 from 6 overs! Annika and Elizabeth started in the bat as they are a very familiar pairing. Elizabeth was run out in the second over, and so Manpreet joined Annika in the paring. With some clever plays into the corners, it didn’t take long for NHEHS to get a score of 15 and win the match. First win – complete!

In the next game we faced Waldegrave Girls School from Twickenham. We knew they had some club players from Bushy Park and so again focused for a hard match. This time we opted to bat first and put out a healthy score of 55 runs. Georgia and Giuliana were a pair to recon with, and although some balls pitched high from Giuliana, luck was on our side, and we were not caught. Onto fielding and again Georgia caught out the batsman on her first bowl! Further batsman fell, a catch for Roxy off Kitty’s bowl, two catches from Kitty and Elizabeth from Minna’s bowling and then a player run out in the last over. We finished the match with another strong win 55- 22.

Game 3 and we were against Vyners from Hillingdon. Winning the toss, we opted to field first and this time shared out the bowling with 6 different players taking an over. Wickets fell, including a superb double bowl and catch from Elizabeth. The opposition only scored 12 after the 6 overs. Onto our turn and it didn’t even take two overs for Carys and Roxy to get 13 and seal the win. Another great game by our team, self-belief was growing.

The final game of the tournament meant we were up against Kingsbury High School. We lost the toss and were allocated to bat first. This time Minna and Manpreet started the batting order, not getting the chance to bat yet this tournament. They played clever shots and soon were scoring 2 and 3 runs off each ball. Lily B then came into the mix, aiding the batting total. 64 put on the board for our team. Georgia opened the bowling and took three outs from four balls, two bowled wickets and one run out! The opposition though then started to find their feet and struck some impressive long hard shots in the second and third overs. Although we could feel the pressure was mounting, we kept our composure and managed to get two further outs in the final two overs. Final score 27 to Kingsbury High and 64 to us!

Owing to this we are excited to make the Middlesex Finals in April!