On a wet Thursday our U13s made their way to Teddington CC for the London & East England regional finals day. We faced the Essex Champions, Harold Wood, in the regional semi-final. Harold Wood won what looked like an important toss and put us into bat - we were also keen to bowl first given the damp conditions and the heavy outfield which would likely mean boundaries would be difficult untill the conditions dried out.

It proved to be a tough start with the bat and our top order struggled with Ridhmeet Puri dismissed first ball to a swinging delivery and Oscar Knight (1 from 8 balls) following soon after with a similar delivery. James Henderson (11 from 28), batting at 4, did well to stop the flow of wickets but found it difficult to score. Amidst all of this, captain Jeevan Brar opened the batting and played fluently in difficult conditions to retire on 30no from 31 balls. Shane Wijeyasinghe (33no from 23 balls) and Noa Fonseka (20no from 17 balls) then took the attack to the later Harold Wood bowlers and ensured that we reached 113/5 from our 20 overs.

Harry Neal (0/23 from 4 overs) and Neil Chahal (0/14 from 2) opened the bowling for us in much improved conditions and the ball was doing less. Noa (1/10 from 2), Oscar Knight (0/11 from 2) and Rafe Alibhai (1/12 from 4) did well to restrict the scoring and make some inroads into the opposition batting before Shane (1/27 from 4) and Aarav Majithia (1/8 from 2) closed out the innings to see us to a 5 run win.

That win put us into the final against Ealing, the Middlesex champions. We won the toss and chose to bowl first and made an excellent start to have Ealing at 28/4 thanks to Harry (1/19 from 4) and Neil (3/26 from 4). Rafe (1/29 from 4), Aarav (0/15 from 2), Oscar (1/28 from 4) and Shane (2/5 from 2) kept plugging away and picking up wickets but the runs kept flowing as Ealing reached 125/8 from 20 overs.

Our batting started well with Shane (26 from 27 balls), Ridhmeet (24 from 37) and Oscar (11 from 18) laying a platform. We were very confident at 70/2 as Jeevan walked out to bat, even though James was injured and unable to bat. However, Jeevan then also injured his hip setting off for a quick single and was unable to get to the other end and was run out for 0; and had to be helped off the pitch. The loss of our captain led to a batting collapse as we subsided from 70/2 to 95 all out to lose by 30 runs and end our 14 match winning streak in 2023.

Whilst the injuries and batting collapse prevented us from progressing further, the boys deserve huge congratulations for their efforts in reaching the regional final and hence the last 8 of the national competition - no small feat given that nearly 1400 clubs entered and we were up against huge clubs with vast resources in the latter stages. They certainly did the club and Coach Raj proud - well done boys!