Cartama Junior Festival October
The beautiful setting of the Cartama Oval, home of the Costa Del Sol Crusaders Cricket Club was the setting for the second Junior festival held there this year. Earlier in May the Costa Crusaders juniors were the first winners of the Cricket España “Costa Del Sol Junior cup”.
Incredibly, the weather for the tournament, 26th and 27th of October was even better than that of May and having just installed two new artificial wickets, David Cooper’s hard work, effort and investment on the pitches was evident, the pitches and grounds looked absolutely amazing.
Three teams were to compete over two days of competition, including the home team Costa Crusaders, Madrid and Barcelona Juniors. With increased number of juniors for this event, the tournament organisers decided to run two competitions, an eight a side soft ball competition, as well as the traditional hard ball T20.
Blessed with beautiful sunshine the festival provided the parents and spectators excellent fun filled competitive matches which were enjoyed by everyone and played in a very sporting way, with the coaches, parents, umpires and the kids themselves helping each other out.
Cricket was definitely the winner and David Cooper and Egan Dantis should be congratulated for organising a marvellous cricket festival. Thanks should also go to the coaches and management of all the teams for making all the arrangements in getting the juniors to the venue, Lewis Clark from Madrid, Arman Nadim and Ghulam Sabar from Barcelona and David Young of Costa Crusaders, well done to them and the parents for all their support.
Egan Dantis and Ghulam Sabar did a fantastic job in organising sponsors for the event, Chaudhary Amanat Maher (Shujah) paid for flights and transport for the Barcelona Juniors while Egan found sponsors to contribute towards their accommodation. Thanks also the sponsors listed below who helped with ground fees, food and drink for the players and trophies for this junior festival for both the softball and hard ball event.
Thanks you to:
Cricket España, Iraf Kebabs, Isturk Kebabs, Taste of India restaurant, Phoenix College Malaga, Ric Hatchman, Mark Gouws, Selim Hossain.
During the festival presentations Harmit Phull (Rico) from Cricket España and David Young from Costa Del Sol Crusaders thanked David Cooper for preparing two wonderful pitches and Egan Dantis for all his hard work and organisational skills in making the tournament a success. Thanks were also given to the hard working bar and catering staff who kept everyone feed and well hydrated during two very warm days. Cricket cannot be played without the umpires and scorers, everyone appreciated the efforts of Dave Riley for traveling from the Alicante region to umpire all the hard ball games with Rico, Special thanks were given to Lewis Clark, Egan Dantis, David Young and all the parents who helped to umpire the soft ball competition and for scoring in both the soft and hard ball event.
All three teams were excellent in both the soft ball and hard ball competition, producing excellent and exciting matches with many great personal performances. But competitions have to have winners, the soft ball tournament was a close affair, with Madrid winning their last match against Barcelona, they were crowned the soft ball champions with Captain Teo Thistlethwaite picking up the winner’s trophy. Teo also collected a trophy for best bowler in this competition while Darshita Binu Paul, also from Madrid, made sure the girls got the other two trophy’s up for grab, she picked up the best Batter award and Lily Young, from the Costa Crusaders, got the award for best all round performance.
The hard ball T20 competition was won by the juniors from Barcelona who remained unbeaten in the competition, Captain and batsman of the tournament Manish Manwani who was not out in any of his three innings, proudly picked up the Costa Juniors cup sponsored by cricket España to the cheers and delight of his players and applause and appreciation from the other teams and spectators. Best bowling award was picked up by young Ed Purdy from Costa Crusaders while Madrid’s Amy Thistlethwaite gave her family double joy, and the girls more to cheer about by picking up the best all round performance award.
This truly was a magnificent festival of cricket, everyone who was part of the event should be proud of the way the two days went. Our juniors demonstrated the sprit in which not just cricket, but all sports should be played, they were a credit to us all.
The youngsters are now looking to form a Cricket España junior under 13 team and enter into the La Manga junior festival in April 2020, anyone wishing to help sponsor the team please contact Rico on, harmitp123@yahoo.com.
Reported by the Twelfth man
