St Mary’s Year 7 and 8 Girls team took part in the Lords Taverners competition at the Westgate Centre for Sport. The girls played in games against Gosforth Central Middle A and B, and Sacred Heart.

Game 1 was played against Gosforth B. The girls bowled brilliantly and fielded well, with Helen Dooner and Kate Lievesley taking excellent catches. Grace Taylor and Kate Lievesley wet the pick of the bowlers and bowled with good accuracy to make life difficult for the Gosforth batters. Gosforth scored 47 from their 8 overs.

Grace Taylor and Eve Blakey batted beautifully and hit some big 6’s to get St Mary’s off to a brilliant start. Both retired but Lily Young and Helen Dooner then carried on with some powerful shots of their own. Thea Cowie and Hannah Crowdy finished the innings off in style with some excellent running with St Mary’s finishing on 97 and winning by 50 runs.

Game 2 was against Sacred Heart and St Mary’s again chose to bat second. Grace started well again and got 2 wickets in her first over. St Mary’s kept their standards of fielding high throughout the game and managed to limit Sacred Heart to 66 runs.

St Mary’s started badly when Ellen Clarke and Ellen Parker got completely mixed up with their running and ran to the same end! Chloe Mason scored well and was run out for 12 in a mix up with Megan Lucas, but St Mary’s struggled to score runs due to some good fielding from Sacred Heart. Megan carried on well and scored 2 well placed fours to get St Mary’s to 44 with 3 overs remaining. Mariyah Ahmed joined Megan and ran well but St Mary’s were still 15 runs short with 2 overs to go. Both girls were out at the beginning of the over but this brought Grace Taylor and Helen Dooner to the crease. Both girls hit the ball well and ran quick singles to edge St Mary’s towards their target, and a big hit from the final over from Helen won the match.

The final game of the round robin stage was St Mary’s against Gosforth A. St Mary’s again chose to bowl first. Eve Blakey and Kate Lievesley bowled very accurately again, but Gosforth batted very well to score 103 runs and set St Mary’s their biggest target so far. Kate Lievesley and Thea Cowie were both caught in the first over, but Eve Blakey and Chloe Mason hit and ran well to get the score moving but Gosforth fielded and bowled very well to make scoring difficult. Chloe retired on 15 not out before another good partnership began to build between Ellen Parker and Megan Lucas. They were unable to get St Mary’s to the required runs however, leaving St Mary’s 40 runs short but still progressed through to the final.

The girls played Gosforth A again in the final and again batted second. Gosforth batted well and managed to score 100 runs. Grace, Kate and Lily all bowled well again, and Helen Dooner took another excellent catch on the boundary to dismiss the top scoring Gosforth batter.

St Mary’s started well with Thea Cowie and Eve Blakey but both were out early in the 3rd over. Grace Taylor soon followed, but some excellent batting from Chloe Mason, Lily Hall and Helen Dooner led to all 3 girls retiring not out. Wickets again tumbled but this allowed the big hitters from earlier to come back in, with Helen and Lily leading St Mary’s to victory with several big 6’s to finish on a total of 131. Helen finished not out on 36, with Lily not out on 25.

The girls showed an excellent attitude all day and were fantastic representatives of the school. They now move on to the next round of the Lords Taverner’s competition where the best teams from across the county will compete to move on to the national finals.

Players of the Day –

Grace Taylor – safe hands when catching, excellent batting and fast bowling.

Lily Young – brilliant batting and fielding all day.

Overall Player of the Tournament –

Helen Dooner – athletic fielding with several excellent stops and catches, accurate bowling and powerful batting. Player of the tournament thanks to her high score of 36* in the final.

Mr Hook

The Team: Mariyah Ahmed, Grace Taylor, Ellen Parker, Hannah Crowdy, Megan Lucas, Thea Cowie, Chloe Mason, Kate Lievesley, Eve Blakey, Helen Dooner, Ellen Clarke, Lily Young.

please click on the following links to watch a video from the event cricket video 1 video 2