Tiddington beat Cumnor and Goring to become U13 Ron Maudsley champions at Dragon on Sunday and represent Oxfordshire in the ECB U13 competition.
Metrological records were broken on Saturday by the amount of rain that fell across Oxfordshire. With more rain overnight and heavy thunderstorms forecast for Sunday the U13 final looked at risk of not going ahead. The ground staff at our original venue decided their ground was unplayable early Sunday morning, and a result by a coin-toss looked likely.
After much searching, Dragon School very kindly agreed to host us, and fortunately the worst of the weather held off and we managed to play cricket.
In the first semi-final Warborough & Shillingford forfeited the match, putting Goring straight through to the final.
Semi-final 2 was between Cumnor and Tiddington, with Tiddington coming out as the winners. Cumnor won the toss and elected to field. Tiddington set 109 all out from their 20 overs. Amies top scored and retired on 33, Barnes (16) and Peacock (17) offered support, after a brief interruption for lightning and thunder. Kent recorded the best bowling figures for Cumnor – 4-15 from his 4 overs. Cumnor started their run-chase positively, not losing their first wicket until the 9th over at 40-1. However, losing wickets regularly brought them up short at 100-8 off their 20 overs. Spicer (29) top scored for Cumnor. Lamb recorded the best bowling figures for Tiddington 3-15 from his 4 overs.
After a short break, and keen to get the next game finished before the sun set, the final got underway, with Goring batting first. Losing early wickets, Goring slipped to 33-3 before Galbraith (22) and Dineen (24) steadied the ship and managed to reach a defendable total of 109 all out off their 20 overs. Pick of the Tiddington bowlers was Lamb again with 3-12 from his 4 overs, followed by Amies with 3-21. Tiddington started their chase slowly, and were just 35-3 at the halfway stage, needing some high scoring to reach their desired total. Amies again played a crucial role in the chase, reaching 28 and was assisted by Peacock’s 21. Tiddington levelled the scores up with 3 balls to go, but lost their 8th wicket a ball later. Knowing that level scores would be victory for them given they had lost fewer wickets than Goring, the final ball of the innings was defended and saw Tiddington victorious.
The presentation of the trophy and medals was conducted by Joe Clapton (Competitions Manager) who thanked Dragon for hosting, the umpires, coaches, scorers and all the teams for a great day of cricket. Thank you to all the clubs who competed in this year’s Competition, and we look forward to seeing more great cricket over the summer.
Congratulations again to Tiddington who now progress onto the national round of this competition and represent Oxfordshire as county winners.