The Aquinas College Girls cricket team have recorded their first win of the season with a victory over Papamoa College.
Led by their coaches Tom Piddington (technical coach) and Greg Kerr (Saturday coach) the team has improved over every game. Please note – Coach Kerr has been given a stern talking to (by his daughter none the less), and told the girls just wanted to have fun, and were not interested in the rules of cricket, self analysis after the each innings, or to go and field at fine leg, or bowl in the channel outside off stump.
After winning the toss and electing to field we restricted Papamoa College to 76 runs in their 20 overs of cricket. The girls were all on a high following this great bowling performance and with a get-able total on the board the girls went into bat confident they could snatch victory.
Annie and Amelia got us off to a good start batting for about 6 overs, and the coach was thinking about retiring them, when Amelia went for a big hit was bowled. Charlotte got a good ball and the wicket keeper took a great catch. That took care of the retirement idea! Lauren came in with the confidence of Pro Tom (the girls coach) who told her she has a better batting style than her brother, and punched the ball around for a few cheeky singles. Her luck ran out when she hit the ball to a fielder at mid wicket who threw the stumps down at the bowlers end with a direct hit.
It was good to see the girls looking for singles, when in the first game they would just look at each other and giggle, now they are backing up and calling for runs.
Nikita came and went quickly as she got a good ball that knocked her castle over.
All of a sudden we were 5 down for 30 odd when Annie was next out bowled as well. There were plenty of overs to go, so we just need to get a good partnership going. And the usual left hand/right hand batters did the trick for us with Kayla and Odette steadying the ship and seeing us to with 20 of the target.
It was great to see Kayla swatting the ball effortlessly to the boundary, and she did not seem too perturbed to be missing out on the conversations on the sidelines. Odette (10 runs) was a good foil for Kayla (12 runs).
By this stage the sideline conversations had stopped as word had spread we could win this. The batters understood that we needed 21 off 8 overs but only 2 wickets in hand. More pressure for the batsman, but these girls didn’t know what pressure was (they even do assignments ahead of the deadline), Coach had a word to the batters and said just keep out the good balls and have a go and the ones wide of the wickets.
Next up were Grace and India who calmly saw off the good balls and hit a boundary and saw us through to our first ever win. The girls were so happy, and their screams of happiness could be heard all over Papamoa.
