On Sunday the 19th of June, Colegio Spinola Sports Club hosted Madrid’s first kids cricket tournament.
Seven teams competed in the under-10 and under-14 categories, five from Colegio Spinola, one from Runnymede College and another, English Pirates, from combined Madrid schools.
Each Spinola team was appointed a coach for the day from Madrid CC with the team being named after the coaches nationality (Spinola Bangladesh, Spinola Australia etc). The three playing areas were named Lords, MCG and Eden Gardens and were used continuously from 10:30 to 1pm
Each tournament started with a round-robin phase, followed by finals for the top 2 teams. In the under-14 category, despite losing the first match in the group stage to Spinola Australia, Runnymede College finished strongly to beat English Pirates in the final and take the trophy.
In the under-11 event, Spinola India batted superbly to beat Spinola Scotland in the final, despite also having lost to them earlier in the day. The match format was 10 minutes per innings, 6-a-side, continuous cricket for the under 14s and 5-a-side, 8 minutes per innings for the under 11s.
Once all members of a team had been eliminated, players batted again until the time ran-out. In practice, this meant that all players batted at least once per game and frequently a number of times. More than two thirds of the 40+ children that took part were Spanish.
A special mention goes to the following players:
Under-10s
Sergio Serrano of Spinola India for fielding, who took five catches in the final.
Roy Clark of Spinola Scotland for batting, particularly his attractive front foot drives.
Under-14s
Dan Wilcox of the English Pirates for great batting and fielding.
Jorge Gomez of Spinola Australia who was named player of the tournament and awarded a continuous cricket set.
A big thanks to all the Madrid CC members that came along to help out, to CD Spinola for hosting the event and to Cricket Spain for providing the equipment.
