Girls’ Cricket Alive and Well at Somerset

This week saw Somerset Girls’ Cricket playing in their second State T20 knockout competition. Many of the girls playing were veterans from last year which was the first time that many had played a game of cricket outside of the beach or back yard.

When I was young I had to convince my sister to bowl to me (I had to play “elastics” with her and her friend – an activity that did my fragile school rep no favours) and cricket was as alien and uncomfortable to her as elastics and gravity was for me. This is “elastics” Not so these days. Our Somerset Girls Cricket co-captain Luisa Ardill-Walker cannot wait to get to PC during summer – not for my grey-bearded sagacity but to discuss the Big Bash and other cricket matters.

Since our first game last year, our other co-Captain, Alex Halloran, has gone on to represent South Coast at cricket.

This Wednesday we played Saint Stephen's, who caned us last year. But we were a stronger squad this time around. Alex is our game-day captain and when she won the toss and elected to bat we already looked better for the training that we had undertaken (on extra afternoons and totally voluntary). The new opening combination of Luisa and Caylin worked well and the wicket-tumbling from last year was gone. Caylin remained unbeaten and has really stood up as a batter. Check their form below:

In the end, we had managed to bat through our allotted overs and improved on last-year’s score by 500 per cent!

Alex then took control in the field – with her and Holly Clements being our bowling spearheads. Alex removed their best bat with a lovely delivery and their coach told me she had never been dismissed before in school cricket!

Alas, the Saint Stephen’s girls were a little too strong for us and they managed to win.

I was very proud of the commitment and improvement in our girls. Debutante Roxy Brown’s overall contribution and Sarah-Anne Hornsey’s stand-in efforts behind the stumps were other highlights. It has been a pleasure coaching them, and I look forward to taking this team further in the future (maybe those whispers about girls cricket coming to APS will come to pass).

Thanks to Mrs McKenna for her enthusiastic support and for Mr Whish for stepping in with last-minute help.