I had the pleasure of watching Richmond's Under 14's win their 3rd trophy of the summer last night. It was an exceptional team performance by a very talented side and, along with the amazing progress of other Age-Group sides in various competitions, it highlighted the depth in young talent that we have at Richmond.
Richmond batted first and a 51 run opening partnership between Eddie Bruce and skipper Sandy Mitchell set the platform for a big score. We were not disappointed. Will Pike showed his class with 45 before having to retire. Arjun Bhat showed great composure in support of Pike whilst Vansh Jani's 28 off 15 balls contained some sumptuous shots. A total of 154/5 was magnificent and put Wimbledon under real pressure. This showed as the visitors' much vaunted upper-order crumbled. Alex Zotov bowled with real pace whilst Kyle Seth's 4 overs were fantastic. With Huw Harris taking 2 good catches behind the sticks and Arjun making a difficult catch in the deep look easy, the scene was set for a big win. James Nelson bowled very nicely, giving the ball air, before Arjun and Vansh ripped through the lower order, both taking excellent catches of their own bowling whilst Huw's stumping was sublime. Perhaps the highlight however was the pin-point accurate throw from the deep by young GB baseball player Jack Nemeth to run-out a Wimbledon batsman. Young Jack could just have the best arm in the club! The victory came with Sandy bowling Wimbledon's number 11 with 65 runs still required. All in all a most satisfying performance. Well done lads and your coaches, particularly Russell Harris, the team manager.

The Under 10's were up against, Harrow, Holwites, Hampstead & Ealing in the Under 10's play-offs, the prize a trip to Lords to defend the Gubby Allen Trophy. Needing to beat all of them to get to the finals, we beat three of the four and the last game of the day - Ealing v Richmond effectively became the semi-final as Ealing also had also beaten the other three.

We were outdone by four direct hit run outs when we went for sharp singles and that in the end was the difference. A real shame as the boys had a really good run winning all 8 of their Gubby Allen games up to then. Particularly against Harrow and Hampstead, our lads played out of their skins and won both the tight games in the last over. We are really pleased that we got this far given we hardly had any Borough/County players compared to the opposition who had at least 2 if not more.

Add to this winning the the South Div 1 League means our U10 lads have had a great season! Many congratulations to David and Sharad who have built a strong foundation that will form core of the future Richmond Cricket (and hopefully beyond!).