Most of us thought in 2021 that this would be a terrifically successful year for our year 8 boys. From U9 softball through finding their feet in U11, 121 coaching, winter nets, district selection and now in their second and final year of U13 this felt like the season where they could bring that all together and show what they could do.
Alas it was not to be, however there is one thing we’ve learnt: there are always positives to be found.

Feedback we received from the 2021 season is that some of the boys were wanting to step things up and play genuinely competitive cricket, which for us meant a DIV1 team entry was a must.

DIV1 is a notable step up from DIV2/3 with most teams having a good representation of district players and also county players. We knew we would need to field our strongest team in this division but felt confident that our top 12-13 players would be up to the challenge.
Unfortunately year 8 is apparently a busy time and there was not a single match were we were able to field a full strength team. Apart from exams and other sports not knowing the difference between summer and winter :-) we lost a number of players moving from the area and the original squad of 12/13 became a lot smaller.
7 of the 2021 squad either did not player at all or played in fewer that half the matches.
The lack of consistency in both players and team managers also took away some of the joy of playing.
It was an important reminder that the social side of being part of a settled and happy team is the foundation of everything.

The bad news is that we lost 11 out of the 12 matches. The match we won was against Chislehurst, and Chislehurst was the only side to beat the ultimate competition winners, am I clutching at straws… :-)
Some of the skills demonstrated by our boys was quite excellent, unfortunately it was all too erratic and we really did witness “the good, the bad and the ugly” in most matches. The goal I set the boys was to score 140-160 in matches and bowl teams out. Our historic strength of bowling deserted us and we never managed to get past 131 runs, but there was nevertheless some real bright sparks in the batting.

Man of the match awards through the season: Arnav, Harry, Max, Noah, Charley, Zak, Will, Thomas, George
I might have missed a few and a special mention to Arnav who certainly deserved man of the match on more than one occasion and some great performances by Suhaan, Ishan and Harry.

Bowling
Player Sum of Wickets Sum of Economy Sum of Bowling S/R
Thomas Van Rensburg 11 3.1 12.0
Max Turner 9 5.8 16.7
Arnav Gupta 3 6.1 48.3
Riley Powis 3 5.0 22.0
Suhaan Chawla 2 5.8 48.0
Jackson Skillicorn 2 8.7 21.0
Harry Smith 2 6.9 30.0
Will Simpson 2 4.2 27.0
Steven Van Rensburg 2 8.0 33.0
Charley Woodrow 2 8.6 55.0

Batting
Player Runs Scored Strike Rate Retirement (25+)
Arnav Gupta 182 81 4
Max Turner 116 81 1
Suhaan Chawla 68 49 0
George Evennett 59 155 1
Harry Smith 50 125 0
Riley Powis 48 62 0
Charley Woodrow 47 80 0
Ishaan Mahajan 46 92 1
Thomas Van Rensburg 46 81 1
Will Simpson 40 60 0

Fielding
Player FIELDING CATCHES RUN OUTS TOTAL VICTIMS
Will Simpson 2 1 3
Arnav Gupta 2 1 3
Ishaan Mahajan 1 1
Steven Van Rensburg 1 1
Riley Powis 1 1
Charley Woodrow 2 1 3
Max Turner 1 1
George Evennett 2 2