TENNIS AND CRICKET NEWS
The National Cup is a 12-round tennis competition between schools across the country. On 7 May we played the second round against Sandringham School, with Sixth Form pupils Dylan and Benjamin securing hard-fought victories and propelling the team into the third round. This round, against Richard Hale School, was also a success, bringing the team into the fourth round, a quarter of the way to the final!
Our younger pupils enjoyed playing in the St Albans School Tennis Championship at Woollams. The top players from First to Fourth Form competed in a singles championship in a round-robin format (each contestant plays every other participant). Exceptional tennis prowess was evident throughout, culminating in Jasper (First Form), Adam (Second Form), Sam (Third Form) and Davin (Fourth Form) claiming their respective age group titles.
We recently played a full block of fixtures against Berkhamsted School. The 1st XI won the toss and chose to bowl first. Their fielding was tight and consistently strong throughout the innings of the opposition. Fourth Form pupil Thomas impressed, especially as an U15 playing in the 1st XI. The opposition declared on 222 runs for 6, setting an achievable target for us to chase down. We batted well, particularly Upper Sixth Form pupil Anil, who played a variety of impressive shots to gain vital runs. We accumulated 157 runs for 5 wickets before the match ended in a draw.
The 3rd XI team, U14As and U14Cs all secured wins against Berkhamsted, and special mentions from the weekend go to Rohan (U15Bs) for scoring 48 and Henry (U14As) who also scored 48 runs.
There were some excellent performances in our block fixture against Bishop's Stortford College on 18 May. The 13A’s, who were two wickets down before there was a run off the bat, fought hard to post a decent score of 131 off their 20 overs. Freddie (Second Form) and Jack (Second Form) put on 71 for the third wicket and this set the base for a challenging total, with Toby (Second Form) scoring 20 runs in as many balls. Thenuka (Second Form) broke the back of their batting with a fiery spell of two wickets for 11 runs off four overs and then Ewan (Second Form) cleaned up the tail with three wickets for just nine runs. We won by 26 runs.
The 14A’s had an excellent game, with St Albans School bowling first and restricting their opponents to 145-9 off their 30 overs. All the bowlers bowled well, but it was the off-spin of Third Former Parin which put the brakes on the batting side and an amazing ‘one hand pick and throw’ run out executed by Hertfordshire EPP (Emerging Players Programme) player Will that really turned the game our way.
The 15A’s had a slightly more comfortable chase even though they were set 158 to win in 30 overs. Krish (Fourth Form) was the pick of the bowlers with 2-13 off 5 overs and well backed up by Saiish (Fourth Form) with 2-21 off his 5 overs. We also excelled in batting, with Aidan (Fourth Form) and Hamza (Fourth Form) putting on 126 for the first wicket. Michael (Fourth Form) and Hugh (Fourth Form) then saw the game home without the loss of further wickets.
The 1st XI got their season’s first win with a very comfortable run chase, easily knocking off the 73 required. Our two debutants, Isaac (Upper Sixth Form) and Rushil (Fourth Form), both performed well with Isaac hitting 33 before being caught and Rushil taking his first 1st XI wicket in a decent spell of leg spin bowling that bodes well for the future. Rory (Upper Sixth Form) and Buster (Lower Sixth Form) set up the win beautifully with a superb spell of opening bowling taking 3 and 4 wickets respectively. St Albans School chased the runs down in less than 11 overs, with Team Captain James Wood returning from injury to score 17 in just 14 balls. There were also wins for the U12A’s, U14B’s, U14C’s and U15C’s. Well done to all our fantastic players!
Mr M IlottTeacher of Cricket
