The Cricketer schools’ coverage

Game on as schools enjoy bumper summer of cricket

For the fi rst time since 2019 schools enjoyed an uninterrupted season with thousands of matches taking place and barely a rain-out in sight. Jim Hindson looks back at some of the standout stories covered by The Cricketer last summer

Schools cricket has certainly been in the news with the ongoing debate over the annual Eton v Harrow fi xture at Lord’s commanding headlines. A consultation process with members was announced in September with a view to considering the future of the two fi xtures at the 2023 AGM.

Back in April, MCC again found themselves in the spotlight, featuring in The Cricketer’s fi rst ‘match of the month’ when the club took on Stowe School on a chilly but bright spring day. Former Glamorgan and Northants batter James Kettleborough came to MCC’s rescue when they were left reeling at 87 for 4, with Stowe opening bowlers Will Pickard and Harvey Julyan doing the damage with the new ball.

Kettleborough came in at No.4 and used all of his experience to soak up the Stowe momentum and then put the students under pressure, compiling an entertaining innings of 69, which included a partnership of 92 for the fi fth wicket with Ollie Tice who made 38. The club eventually declared on 253 for 6 from 50 overs and although the Stowe chase fell away, Stowe coach and former Surrey gloveman James Knott relished the challenge. He explained that the boys had been practising for situations just like this for the last few months.

“We’ve had a full winter’s preparation, which is where we get the majority of the technical work done. This was followed by a ‘proper’ pre-season and a full fi xture list this year. It’s much better compared to last year when we were under Covid restrictions, and some schools even just played other schools in a bubble around them. It’s back to normal to be honest.”

This was a timed game and Knott revealed that the boys enjoyed this nuanced format: “We get to post two or three slips and a gully which you wouldn’t normally see in limited-overs cricket, where our focus would be dot balls and building pressure. Our chat today was to get four or fi ve down for lunch and then to bowl MCC out. We executed the fi rst part of our plan at least [MCC were four down at lunch] and even though the chase started badly and we hadn’t got a realistic chance of winning the game, we could still battle it out for a draw in this format.”

This summer saw the inaugural Under-13 Girls' Cricket Championship, held at Marlborough College and described by England opening batter Tammy Beaumont as ‘amazing.’ Beaumont took advantage of some rare downtime from international duties to watch this tournament which featured 16 eight-a-side teams played in four groups, followed by semi-fi nals and a fi nal. Beaumont was full of praise for the tournament and told The Cricketer. "I turned up and the fi rst thing I saw was a girl smash a six out of the ground. I thought back to my school days and there wasn't even a girls' team. So to see 16 teams playing in full, loving the game, to a really high standard, I just think it's amazing."

Beaumont gave the prize for best batter to Katharine Collie, from

Crosfi elds, with Georgia Toosey from

Daneshill named best bowler. The

ABOVE James Knott and the match between Stowe School and MCC

GETTY IMAGES

rising star award went to Nishka Gavanka from Crosfi elds with her school also crowned as winners of the competition.

The relationship between pupils and coaches doesn’t necessarily end when pupils leave as The Cricketer discovered in an interview with former Hampshire left arm spinner Raj Maru. The head of cricket at Lancing College took a call from former pupil Mason Crane during the season.

Maru actually began at Lancing on the same day that Mason Crane joined the school as a student. The pair have maintained their relationship ever since and when the Hampshire legspinner got in touch on the back of a mediocre start to his campaign that included a loan spell at Sussex, Maru was happy to talk. "He didn't have the greatest start to the season, but give him credit: he rang up and asked if I had any spare time," says Maru. "He told me he was struggling a little bit, so we cleared it with Hampshire and worked together."

Crane’s output improved o the back of working with Maru, which included technical work on an issue with his front arm brought on by the positioning of his front foot. He explains: "We got him to bowl from six inches wider, to drop the arm by six inches and to start using the front arm properly. Suddenly, things started to fall back into place. "You have to be brave and have some sort of guts to ask for help. For him to do that shows maturity and a lot of courage. It's not easy doing that."

Elsewhere, it was independent versus state school in the T20 fi xture between Haberdashers’ Boys’ School and Watford Grammar. Watford Grammar’s head of physical education James Dyson explained that this was a fi xture that his boys were looking forward to: “There’s a really good rivalry between us and Habs’ with matches between us competitive and of a high standard. A lot of the boys know each other from local club cricket and prep schools so the games are played in a good spirit with bragging rights very much the order of the day.

“What we can o er as a state school is to provide the opportunity for A–D block fi xtures in midweek and Habs are one of the more forward-thinking schools who accommodate us. Other independents will tend to go for more traditional larger blocks of fi xtures at the weekend against the more prestigious schools but due to our sta ng model at Watford we just can’t o er this.”

In the match, Habs won the toss and elected to bat under a baking June sun on a wicket that had enough grass to still showcase a green tinge. They were soon in trouble, being reduced to 68 for 4 in the eighth over with Niyam Shah and Ashish Padki tasked with rebuilding the innings. Krishan Patel bowled tidily, taking 2 for 15 from his fi rst three overs, which were completed exclusively in the Powerplay.

Shah and Padki warmed to their task, taking Habs to a solid base of 122 for 4 from 16 overs before throwing caution to the wind and taking it to the Watford bowlers. The fi nal four overs produced 56 runs, with both players remaining unbeaten in a competitive total of 172 for 4 from their 20 overs.

Padki made a brisk 42 not out from 32 balls but it was Shah who stole the show, making 102 not out from 58 deliveries, including fourteen fours and one six.

Shah will be First XI captain next year and this innings showed leadership qualities in abundance.

Watford Grammar began their reply in fi ne fettle, with openers Ben Beasley and Nikhil Nair, who had earlier bowled four tidy overs of legspin for 1 for 25, quickly picking up the pace of the pitch. The opening partnership was worth 59 before Nair departed and after eight overs the visitors were 68 for 1, still favourites to win the match. The pace of Felix Hart and o spin of Sid Kheria applied the brakes and breakthroughs to the Watford innings, Hart bowling three overs for six runs and Kheria taking 3 for 26.

The Watford innings fell away with a young middle-order unable to sustain the run chase and Habs ultimately took the spoils in a 56-run victory.

Dyson was still upbeat about the performance from his inexperienced team and explained how the pandemic has a ected selection.

“We had a very young middle-order due to player availability. We’ve had a couple of years without exams due to Covid – but with exams

ABOVE Tammy Beaumont at the Under-13 Girls’ Cricket Championship, held at Marlborough College BELOW Mason Crane appearing for London Spirit in The Hundred

ABOVE The match between Haberdashers’ Boys’ School and Watford Grammar back, it appears that players are finding it a challenge to balance playing and the understandable stress of exams and are sacrificing matches to study. Pupils have always been under pressure at this time of the year but post-covid it seems like this is now greater than ever. On the flipside, this has been the best summer for the U15s with no exams to speak of and plenty of opportunities to play up in the senior teams.”

Dyson concluded: “Despite the exams being on, cricket is very popular at the school. Put it this way – I get far more emails from boys who are disappointed to miss out on selection compared to players dropping out. And that’s the way it should be.”

Cricket is now thriving at Guildford High School following the sport’s welcome addition to the curriculum in 2019. The all-girls school now boasts over 25 cricket teams, providing a constant supply of talent for local clubs, and attracts over half of the pupils to extra-curricular sessions.

And in June of this year, they took their programme one step further by embarking on the school’s first ever cricket tour: a long weekend in Brighton for 24 pupils. The girls played an Under13s and an Under-15s match against Hurstpierpoint College, took in a T20 Blast game at Hove and also found time for an internal match and an impromptu game of beach cricket before heading back to school.

Ben Collins runs cricket at the school and he explained: "It was all selectionbased, so it gave the students an incentive to work hard. They had four weeks up to the tour to perform well in lessons and fixtures, be keen and improve. All of them wanted to be on the tour. "The standard of cricket across the trip was really high – we'll definitely look to run that fixture [against Hurstpierpoint] again. And the internal game, it was great to see the Under-15s mixing with the Under-13s. It was nice for team bonding and seeing the older girls saying, 'Wow, you’re really good!' to the younger ones."

Finally to Framlingham College, where head of cricket Jack Beaumont has overseen senior girls’ selection into the boys' 1st XI. Beaumont admits one of his top priorities remains breaking down the barriers between boys' and girls' cricket through mixed training and teams – both in school fixtures and the Albert XI, a mixed year-group team who play long-format games against touring representative sides. "It stretches the girls in a different way to girls' cricket because the way the game is played is different," Beaumont says. "You talk to the current England players and one of the things that helped them was playing boys’ cricket and adult men's cricket. The skill level is very close, it’s actually the power and speed that makes the difference. "They have to be quite a strong character to dominate a boys' game. Often in the first few games, they're quite timid, reserved, and shy but the more they play, the more they get involved. It's just a game of cricket with people they see around school and chat to like normal people – boys' cricket gets put on a pedestal. "It's nice to see other girls who aren't in the boys' team going, 'Hollie hasn’t played with them has she? She got three wickets? That's amazing!'. It boosts Hollie up and the other girls start to think it might be achievable. The best girls can certainly compete with the best boys. "For the boys, it's nice for them to mix because they've started to realise that the girls are pretty good. They're not embarrassed to get out [to the girls] anymore."

AARON PARSONS