Yorkshire Cricket Board

Yorkshire U15s enjoyed a memorable 2 days at Kibworth CC for the Royal London U15s Cup Finals. Afters losing to Surrey in a rain affected game the young Tykes beat Essex to claim 3rd place

The team of Alec Drury capt., Nick Lowe, Lewis Pike, Rory France, Hayden Bradley, Jack Bleazard, Wahab Mirza, Eitan Litvin (WK), Dan Ward, Aadam Hussain, Max Chappell, Josh Sullivan are seen pictured with the match reports as follows:

Day 1 vs Surrey. LOST BY 4 WICKETS ON D/L METHOD

On a wet Tuesday in Leicestershire YSCA U15a played Surrey in the Royal London U15 County Finals; Semi-Final. (The other Semi saw Lancashire easily beat Essex)
In cold and damp conditions that were not conducive to good cricket YSCA took the first blow by winning the toss and deciding to bat first with the forecast of rain later.
N Lowe and L Pike putting on a 13 run partnership for the first wicket, with the latter looking to take advantage of the fielding restrictions by going over the top miscued his shot and was well caught at Mid Wicket.
This brought R France to the wicket, Lowe and France built a superb partnership (113) and in tricky conditions they blunted the Surrey attack, displaying some excellent running between the wickets and positive batting against the Surrey spinners. The partnership was broken at 130/2 in the 31st over when Lowe was out for 62 from 99 balls. As is often the case after a big partnership wickets fell at regular intervals with YSCA looking to accelerate towards the end of the innings. Drury (12), Bradley (1), Blezard (24), Mirza (8), Importantly Rory France carried his bat and ended the innings 69* from 120 balls.
YSCA Closed the innings 222 for 6
In Reply YSCA took an early wicket when F Boys(10) was well caught by Drury of Mirza. Surrey dug in and built a partnership with the excellent R Ratnasabpathy (62) one of the tournaments leading run scorers looking dangerous.
The Introduction of spin looked to offer some control for YSCA with Alec Drury 10-2-30-2 leading the spin attack excellently. Surrey built a significant partnership (66) in the middle overs but when S Hall (32) fell to Drury in the 32nd over things looked to be swinging our way. With the score on 125/3 in the 33rd over Surrey were behind the rate and it was looking like Yorkshire would apply pressure to the new batters and close the game out.

During the 35th over the forecast rain arrived and it looked like the game might have to abandoned with Surrey the winners on the D/L Method which would have been a very unsatisfactory end to proceedings. The ground staff and Yorkshire Coaches and Parents did their utmost to get the game back on and at the last possible moment the rains cleared and we could finish the game. Duckworth Lewis calculations were made and it was deemed Surrey Required 49 Runs from 39 Balls.
Yorkshire took 3 wickets after the resumption including the dangerous Ratnasabpathy. Unfortunately with a wet ball and conditions not in our favour we couldn’t close out the game and Surrey came home winners by 4 wickets.

Day 2 – 3rd and 4th place play off – vs ESSEX U15 WON BY 6 WICKETS
Day 2 started off as day 1 ended – WET. A delayed start and reduced over’s game was eventually started after lunch.
Essex won the toss and decided to bat first. Essex were never in the game and lost wickets at regular intervals, only one batter making double figures H Kumar (47). Yorkshire Dominated proceedings again A Drury showing his class with the ball finishing with figures of 6.5-2-24-5
The Essex innings finished tamely on 97 all out.

In Reply Yorkshire lost two early Wickets, Lowe(7) & Pike(0) to be 9-2 in the 3rd over, Essex’s opening bowlers were looking dangerous at this point but R France (26) & A Drury (16) settled the ship and rebuilt the Yorkshire innings until they were both dismissed. Yorkshire wanted to finish the game strongly and the players were determined not to just “get over the line” they looked to be positive throughout, which was very pleasing. It could have been all too easy for them to finish on a wimper, instead H Bradley (24*) and J Blezaed (20*) closed out the innings with a very mature and chanceless partnership. Yorkshire Won the game by 6 Wickets and Finished 3rd in the U15 County Championship. A great result of the team and huge congratulation to them for the way they carried themselves at finals day.