Hat tricks for cricketing girls

Colston’s School completed a brilliant hat-trick when the Under 15 girls won the eight-a-side Gloucestershire Lady Taverners’ Indoor Cricket title for the third year in a row.

“The pressure was on this year because seven of the 10 squad players were completely new to the game,” said Liz Young, Head of Girls’ Games. “However the players are such good games players that they picked up the game extremely well.”

In the preliminary stages Colston’s comfortably beat Castle and Rednock Schools due to great bowling by team captain Alice Arnold and some superb wicket keeping by Stephanie Clarke.

In the county finals the young Colston’s side rose to the challenge against Cleeve and Newent Schools.

Against Cleeve they managed only 37 runs in their six overs and needed something special to stay in the competition. They got it when Alice took a hat-trick of wickets. Excellent support bowling by Melissa Smith, Becky Greaves and fine fielding by the team as a whole limited Cleeve to 34 runs.

Colston’s beat Newent convincingly in the final, scoring a superb 96 runs including 41 by Becky, and keeping their opponents down to 28. Alice took six wickets for four runs in six overs and Stephanie claimed six catches and a stumping.

As county champions Colston’s represented Gloucestershire in the South West Regional Finals.

They found themselves in a tough group, beating the Hampshire champions by 23 runs but losing to the Devon champions by 13 runs and the Cornwall champions by just three runs.

Cornwall went on to win the regional event and are into the national final.

“In spite of going out at the regional stage it was a great performance by the team with good individual batting by Alice Arnold and Melissa Smith,” Liz added.