ECCL Junior Cricket League Report
Last Sunday saw the final league matches of ECCL region Junior indoor Cricket league, It was decided to play the final matches using hard ball at La Manga Club.
The league started out back in January as a Street 20, which became an 8 a side indoor league finishing with Hard ball Cricket outside.
The introduction of street 20 organised by Cricket Espana, will now be genuine pathway for junior players to start with this format of the game working towards hard ball league cricket.
Four teams took part in the league with Sporting Alfas CC representing the North of the region, Torrevieja representing central area with La Manga kings representing the South.
The Junior players taking part were aged from 9 to 18 years of age, the two youngest groups were from La Manga Kings with an average age of 12, although they finished 3rd & 4th respectively they were a credit to the league giving some of the other teams very close matches.
Torrevieja CC finished a close 2nd with some strong performances the end of the season, if only their late form was their at the beginning of the league things might have been different, Torrevieja can be very proud of themselves by becoming a strong group of players and will be be hard to beat as team for the future.
The winners of the league were sporting Alfas CC who were the most consistent team only losing two games one of them being against Torrevieja this weekend, they had good blend of young & older players that work well especially the younger players supporting the older ones when required.
The overall development of the players over the six months has been immense, some of the younger players hadn´t played Cricket before and to see them bowl and bat yesterday was a credit to all the hard work put in by all the coaches, Martin Harbour La Manga Kings, Mark Perman Sporting Alfas and Kieran Wood and John Algar of Torrevieja CC
With Sporting Alfas collecting champions trophy other awards were given to MVP of each team and an overall player of the tournament, this was one by Kieran Perman of Sporting Alfas scoring over 200 runs and taking 11 wkts, team awards went to Stephen Thompson of Torrevieja CC, Tyler Brown of Sporting Alfas, Theo Rumistrzewicz and Rupert James both of La Manga Kings.
Cricket Espana is already looking at having two leagues next year with diferent age groups, so the format will grow and help young players develop their skills in Spain.
Cricket Espana will be looking to build this format taking street 20 and working towards hard ball league cricket in other regions of Spain.
From a very proud director of Spanish Cricket.
Neil Brook.
