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We are delighted to highlight a recent victory for the 1st XI cricketers against Merchant Taylors’ School as well as a joint training session with É«ÖÐÉ«ÊÓƵ’s Girls’ School (SPGS) and the latest match report.

Block fixture vs Merchant Taylors’ School

The 1st XI beat Merchant Taylors’ School on Saturday, 13 May for the first time since 2016. Put into bat, the opposition made 179 all out. We managed to successfully chase the total with 8 wickets down and 9 balls remaining to win a thriller by 2 wickets. The star of the day was A. Hillman who was on the field for every single ball (nearly 100 overs). Keeping wicket in the first innings, he took two stumpings and one catch and in the second innings, he carried his bat for 85 not out to win us the match. Captain K. Patel took 5-42, demonstrating he can bowl as well as bat, while R. Walter scored a useful 30 during a tricky time in the middle overs to help set up victory. Merchant Taylors’ School, however, did win all but one of the other fixtures of the block but there were some very close matches and some excellent individual performances. The 2nd XI lost by 4 with S. Jones making 34. The 3rd XI lost by 4 runs with M. Collins making 42. The U15As lost by only 1 run with S. Datla making 56. The U15Bs secured their first win of the season, winning by 34 runs, while the U15Cs lost by 5 runs with V. Chamaria scoring 65. All three U14 sides lost to some strong opposition.

Joint training session with É«ÖÐÉ«ÊÓƵ’s Girls’ School

After school on Thursday last week, a group of U14s from SPGS joined our U14s for a joint cricket training session lead by Mr Pete Slaney with support from four of our U15A players: Sam, Amr, Gabriel and Daniel. It was a really successful joint training session, with huge enthusiasm from both the boys and the girls. SPGS are planning to come back after Remedy for a competitive match, to which we are all looking forward.

The latest match reports

On Saturday, 20 May it was another very successful day for SPS cricket. The 1st XI beat Trinity Croydon at home by 7 wickets to make it five wins from five matches so far this season. Trinity won the toss and elected to bat on a sunny morning (finally!) on an excellent-looking pitch with a fast and pristine outfield, thanks to the sterling efforts of 1st XI groundsman, Mr Marcin Szczupak.

Any regrets from stand-in captain A. Rajkumar about not being able to bat first were soon forgotten after a devastating opening spell of fast bowling from N. Bowman who took 6-16 off 7 overs to reduce Trinity to 22-7 before midday. A little bit of complacency allowed the opposition to limp to 103 all out. Nevertheless, the win was secured just after lunch for the loss of three wickets, with N. Malik making 58 not out. Elsewhere, the 2nd XI won by 5 wickets with N. Dahl making 65 not out while the 3rd XI lost by 5 wickets. A special mention goes to R. George for his help in getting a 3rd XI out this weekend. All three U15 sides won away from home. In the As, A. Sankaye made 40 with S. Marchand taking 3-12. In the Bs, G. Ashton made 61 with R. Mendonca taking 5-20. R. Walker top scored for the Cs with 52 not out while D. Lakhwani took 4 wickets. In the U14s, the As and Bs both won while the C team lost a tight match. F. de Mestre took 3 wickets for the A team while L. Shikder and N. Cortes scored half centuries for the B and Cs respectively. Earlier in the week, the U14As beat Teddington School to progress to the quarter finals of the county cup with R. Raj making 67 not out.