Indoor Cricket at The Regis School

We have six children that do cricket club before school on a Monday, so we sent this six to an inter-school competition in Bognor!

On a cold Tuesday afternoon in February, the Jessie Younghusband cricket team joined three other schools for an indoor cricket event hosted at The Regis School. The JYS team were represented by Luke and Mackenzie in Year 6, Ben in Year 5 and Calum, Iona and Oscar in Year 3. Each school team were competing for a place in the county finals, in April this year.

It is important to remember that indoor cricket has slightly different rules to the outdoor version of the game. Therefore, although the Jessie Younghusband team knew how to play cricket, the majority were not clear of the rules for the indoor version. It was also a very different type of ball that they needed to become familiar with. Despite this, the team represented Jessie Younghusband wonderfully, showing fantastic sportsmanship, great perseverance and fantastic determination. They also showed resilience throughout the games they played.

Jessie Younghusband were one of the first teams to play. For the first game, they were against Barnham School. This game was a fantastic warm up game. They displayed great promise with some brilliant batting, particularly from Oscar, Ben and Luke and two superb wickets from Callum. It was a close competition and Barnham eventually won with a score of 227 against a JYS score of 210. The cricket coach gave the JYS team some fantastic feedback to practice their bowling and to remember that they did not need to run for every hit as this is where we lost the points. Taking the feedback on board, the JYS team showed great determination by going and practicing their bowling and communication when batting.

The second game showed a 100% improvement. Even the coach shared that he could see in just one game how much the team had improved. This game saw some brilliant runs by Luke and Mackenzie, a fantastic run out from Callum, a wicket by Oscar, a catch by Luke and a wonderful display of perseverance and enthusiasm from Iona. There were some big hits again from Oscar, Callum and Ben but what this game showed most was a great display of the JYS values, perseverance, determination, resilience and effort. They encouraged each other and congratulated the other team when they did well. The final score was 261 for Slindon and 236 for JYS. A great improvement.

The final game can be described as the game of "the big hits". The JYS team had listened to the feedback from the previous game and came out determined to improve again. The team decided to bowl first this game and straight away showed some excellent fielding with Iona achieving the catch of the match! Mackenzie showed great perseverance with his bowling. When it was their turn to bat, the JYS team knew they had a score of 243 to beat. The team's determination and effort was superb. Oscar showed great power with his batting and worked well with his partner Luke to achieve some great runs. The team made the brave decision to swap batting pairs and up were Callum and Ben who together scored an amazing 30 runs! The batting then finished with Iona and Mackenzie who kept cool heads and made excellent judgments about whether or not they should run. It was a superb game and the JYS finished with a brilliant score of 252. They had won a game!! Displaying great sportsmanship to the end they made sure they shook hands with the opposing team.

Unfortunately, the JYS team did not make it through to the next stage, but they did manage to draw with Slindon and Edward Bryant School. Barnham will go through to the next stages. Despite this, what the team did display throughout was great encouragement and support, fantastic teamwork, determination to improve, absolute 100% effort, perseverance and resilience when they had moments of difficulty. The team represent JYS wonderfully and made us all very proud. Well done team!