The Hackney girls cricket team came an impressive third at the London Youth Games cricket final held at Lords on Sunday, while the boys finished joint seventh.
Cricket is not traditionally Hackney’s strongest sport and this was the first time either team made it to the last eight since the London-wide tournament was launched in 1996.
Despite going out to eventual winners Hammersmith & Fulham, girls’ coach Ian Bruce was understandably delighted with his team’s showing.
He said: “Getting this far was an achievement in itself and they’ve performed out of their skins – they’ve done fantastically well.”
The girls – eight of them from Stoke Newington School – were led at bat in the semi-finals by Mif Worman and Paige Bailey-Gayle. The rules state that players cannot score more than 20 runs and both girls had to retire when they reached the milestone.
Despite being several years younger than many of the other players in the under 13 tournament, Paige, who is still in primary school, was one of the revelations of the tournament. She reached 20 runs in just one over when playing at Harrow in the run up to the finals.
The boys also performed well to reach the last eight, losing to a strong Wandsworth team, and team manager Robert Merry vowed to do even better next year.
He said: “It was a great effort all round, we were just slightly short on the day but they’ll learn from this and we’ll be back next year.”
The London Youth Games have been running since 1977 and last year over 100,000 youngsters took part, competing in 33 sports.
