This weekend Torrevieja CC held the first Street Cricket event in Spain, in conjunction with Torrevieja Town Hall.
The event was a great success with plenty of spectactors taking a keen intrest in what was going on, Spanish families looking a bit confused at the spectacle with British families even more confused seeing cricket played in Spain.
Torrevieja cricket club organised a great event handing leaflets to passer byes.The tannoy system explained the rules, whilst the location was in a pedestrian walkway with shops down one side and Graffiti on a derelict building on the other side. At both ends of the temporary pitch we had restaurants and bars with people enjoying their evening watching cricket with a drink and food by their side.
We had around 20 children taking part most living locally. The teams comprised of players from La Manga Cricket Club and Mar Azul International School with the other team from Torrevieja Cricket Club.
All matches were played to street cricket rules where you could catch one handed off the wall, one bounce one handed catch, target areas for batsman, target areas for bowlers, it was decided to have a couple of warm up games to let the kids get used to the rules then get on with a round robin tournament.
The round robin tournament put the Mar Azul- La Manga B team against Torrevieja CC with Mar Azul scoring 34 in their innings with Torrevieja getting the runs with 2 overs to spare.
2nd game put the two Mar Azul La Manga teams together with the A team coming out on top, the remaining round robin match was a close fought match between Mar Azul- La Manga A v Torrevieja CC with Mar Azul winning in the last over.
The final was played between the two top teams Mar Azul-La Manga A team and Torrevieja CC with La Manga winning the toss and deciding to bat, La Manga Mar Azul went about their batting with the openers going for big runs pushing the target to 91 runs off the allocated 5 overs, It was always going to be difficult for Torrevieja but they made a good game of it scoring at least 10 an over but they marginally failed to reach the score, with Mar Azul La Manga ending up the winners.
The event ended under street lights with the presentation of medals and trophies. The award ceremony was hosted by Torrevieja players Jon Algar and Graham Skelton who can be proud of making this fantastic event to a tremendous success
Cricket Espana would just like to thank all the kids, parents for being involved and Torrevieja Town hall and Torrevieja CC for organising a most enjoyable event.
Neil Brook
Direct Junior Cricket
