Bromley U14's win the District Cricket Competition final 2009 V Sevenoaks.

Bromley U14's won the District Competition final yesterday at the St Lawrence KCC ground yesterday. Basic scorecard details follow, together with a match report :- Sevenoaks District 158 for 7 (30 Overs) James Jones 6 Overs 1 for 28, Jordan Walker 4 Overs 0 for 17, Tareiq Holmes-Dennis 1 Over 0 for 11, Adam Freeman 7 Overs 3 for 31, Harry Thompson 3 Overs 0 for 21, Alex Graham 5 Overs 1 for 9, Jo Gold 4 Overs 0 for 22. Bromley District 162 for 6 (27.1 Overs) Alex Tate 59, Peter Mears 26, Tareiq Holmes-Dennis 16 Not Out, Alistair McWilliam 10, Harry Thompson 10 Not Out Bromley District U14's WON by 4 Wickets Due to a bit of of downpour in the morning, the U12 final which was played before ours took longer than expected. This meant that the U14 final was reduced from 35 to 30 overs. The Kent powers that be were keen for the U14 final to start as soon as possible, so we were faced with a somewhat unique situation i.e. having to toss up from outside of the boundary rope without having had the chance to look at the wicket. Harry Thompson won the toss and in the circumstances made the sensible decision to bowl first. Having been given the hurry up, it was then frustrating that the game could not start because the U14 players were not allowed anywhere near the dressing rooms until the U12's had vacated them. Sevenoaks got off to a reasonable start against the Bromley openers James Jones and Jordan Walker. However, one of their openers looked particularly threatening, that is until we introduced Adam Freeman into the attack. His first spell was exactly what was needed and provided him with the brilliant analysis of 4 Overs 2 for 7 (including the Sevenoaks danger man). At the half way point Sevenoaks appeared to be getting on top, having scored just over 80 with 8 wickets in hand. Bromley desperately needed a really tight second half, as Sevenoaks were bound to attempt to accelerate. Bromley did really well in the last 15 Overs of the Sevenoaks innings, in that they did not even manage to double their score, despite having the wickets in hand to make an all out assault. The fact that they did not, was due to a much improved bowling and fielding performance, with everyone contributing to the team effort. Of particular note was Alex Graham's misery spell which completely tied up one end. Fantastic for a bowler who did not want to bowl in previous games, due to lack of confidence, Believe in yourself Alex !. With the length and strength of Bromley's batting, 159 should have been readily getable. Sevenoaks however had other ideas and came out and made us fight for virtually every run. Alex Tate batted extremely well initially anchoring the innings after the seemingly unfortunate early loss of Jo Gold. He was then forced onto the offensive after the relatively early dismissals of Alistair McWilliam, Alex Graham, and Matthew Abbett, all of whom we would normally expect to score at a healthy rate. The game became perfectly poised at the 10 Overs to go stage with Bromley needing just over 1 a ball to win with 6 wickets in hand. Peter Mears played a really crucial innings, in a supporting role at the outset, until Alex was eventually dismissed for a very well constructed 59. Peter then took the fight to the Sevenoaks bowlers and scored 6 fours in rapid succession. The asking rate became 35 from 5 Overs with 5 wickets remaining. This is where the strength of the Bromley batting line up came into play. Perhaps not surprising as all of our players are major batsmen for their club sides. So what looked liked a challenging last 5 Over total ended up as a formality. Tareiq Holmes-Dennis and Harry Thompson finished the game off very quickly with 2.5 Overs to spare. In truth, the Sevenoaks bowling became very nervy towards the end, but all credit to Harry for batting in his usual mature fashion, and especially to Tareiq, who came back extremely strongly from a bit of a personal bowling disaster. All in all a very good win which was achieved, despite the fact that Bromley came under pressure a number of times during the game. What I really liked about the overall team performance was that everyone continued to try their best, encouraged, and kept their heads up, irrelevant of personal contributions. Howard Abbett Bromley District Under 14 Manager

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