Suffolk County Cricket Board

The ECB’s Lady Taverners Indoor competition aimed at girls in school years 7 – 10 took place over the last two months, at various venues across Suffolk.  This gave girls from state and independent schools the opportunity to participate in a national indoor competition.

To encourage entrants, schools were offered the opportunity to have pre-tournament coaching from either participating Chance to Shine clubs or a member of the Suffolk Cricket Board Development team. This along with the excellent work of Ian Jackson (Senior Competition Manager) and his team, meant the number of girls and schools participating leapt considerably from 2009. This year we had 231 individuals (27 teams) from 25 different schools, whereas last year we had 50 individuals approx (6 teams) from just 5 schools.

Mary (Munley) kindly produced leaflets containing information about the Womens and Girls sections within clubs  across the county. These were handed directly to the girls so they could make an informed choice about whether they wished to pursue cricket outside their school environment.

On the playing front the eventual County final winners for the u13’s tournament were St Louis Middle School (Bury St Edmunds), whilst St Josephs (Ipswich) won the u15 competition. Both will now go forward to the Regional Finals at Hatfield next month, which Mary is planning to attend.

 On behalf of the Suffolk Cricket Board I’d like to thank Ian and all his team for their help in ensuring a massive increase in the number of schools participating this year, and also for their assistance at all the festivals. In addition I’d personally like to thank Mary, Tom (Huggins) and Martin (Taylor) for their support without which we would not have had SCB presence at all ten events.

Regards
Rob Jones

Cricket  Development Officer - Suffolk