On Sunday, Aston Rowant CC met Henley CC in the U13 South/East Final at the beautiful venue of Shiplake College.

Aston Rowant won the toss and elected to bat with openers Conor Rogan and Sam Grocutt making 25 & 19 respectively. There followed a collapse of seismic proportions with next 4 wickets falling for 5 runs which included a hat-trick for Henley bowler, Tom Yeoman and some confident catching from team members Lawrence Walker, Oliver Hewes and Dylan Price . At the end of the Aston Rowant innings Henley needed 93 to win, a modest target on a good pitch but with 4s at a premium this was going to be a challenge.

Much like the Aston Rowant innings it was the Henley openers Oliver Saunders (17) and Tom Yeoman (22) who stuck around for the longest time and made the bulk of the runs with their progress being persistent. The game was in the balance until Max Cowling came on for his bowling spell stemming the run rate by allowing only 3 runs off his 3 overs. Henley made it to 42 without loss before Jacob Eaton made the breakthrough with an excellent catch from Calum Lambert followed by Arlo Hyman taking 3 wickets for 7 runs. This low-scoring but tense game ended in the final over of the match with the fall of Henley’s last batsman on a total of 74. Aston Rowant won by 18 runs.

Thank you to Matthew Grocutt and Mike Quinn for coaching the teams, the umpires, scorers and ground staff which allowed this competition to have such a lovely finale.

Thanks also to all the teams who have participated in this competition and umpires, scorers and groundsmen that have made it possible in the truncated season.