Following their defeat 5 wicket defeat of Ansty CC, Blackheath Under 13s are through to the MCC Spirit of Cricket U13 National Club Championship Regional Finals.

The four teams who have qualified for the Regional Final at Bishop’s Stortford are Cambridge NCI (Cambs), Letchworth (Herts), Blackheath (Kent) and Sheen Park (Middlesex)

The Regional Final will be held on Wednesday 29th July with a reserve day on the following day.

Blackheath CC continued their love affair with knockout cricket, retaining the U13 Kent Cup they had won 12 months earlier, once again beating old rivals Bexley CC in the final.

On an overcast evening in Maidstone, Bexley skipper Angus Dalgleish elected to bowl first and his decision looked a good one as the Bexley openers set about a Blackheath attack nullified by a slow wicket and affected by short boundaries behind the bat.

Despite an accurate spell from Blackheath’s Rahi Robiul, Dalgleish soon retired with his 30* (as is mandatory in this competition) after his opening partner George Haley had been removed for 27.

Blackheath had another long wicket-less period but were now bowling more dot balls and applying more pressure as the Bexley middle order struggled to come to terms with the pace and accuracy of Junaid Nadir (4 overs for just 10 runs) and Shazidur Rahman (3 wickets).

Harry Furze also retired with his 30 in the closing overs after a slow start but the final Bexley total of 114-4 looked challenging yet achievable.

Blackheath set about the total in exactly the right manner.

Captain Masud Ahmed’s astute rotation of the strike combined with the pinch-hitting of Habib Ali-Chowdhury asked questions of Bexley but when the impressive Daniel Golding removed the Blackheath skipper, Chowdhury soon followed caught on the edge by Dalgleish and Bexley were back in the game.

The partnership of the game then followed as Akram Khan and Junaid Nadir put on 67 runs for the 3rd wicket. The pair’s aggressive running, elegant stroke play and generally well thought out innings effectively won the game for Blackheath despite both having to retire just before the target was reached.

It was left to Shaykul Hoque and Rahi Robiul to knock off the last few runs and ensure that Blackheath CC again go forward to represent Kent in the South of England stage of this National Competition.

Blackheath will now go on and represent the County in the Area Finals on a date yet to be arranged.

(Thanks go to Steve Griggs at Bexley for allowing us to use these photographs)

The beaten finalists Bexley

Leagues have entered the number of teams shown in Column 2.  Column 3 shows the number of clubs from that League that will progress through to the last 16 in the County.

Ashford and Border will run mini-leagues to determine which team goes through to the  last 16.

The Ashford and Border Mini-League Programme is as follows:

The Last Sixteen Stage

Once the above competitions are resolved, the last 16 teams in Kent will be known.  The following table shows the progress to the eventual winning team which will go on to represent the County in the National Championship

ECB has confirmed the details for the latter stages of the MCC Spirit of Cricket U13 National Club Championship - with some format changes for the 2009 competition.

This competition is the largest competition run by the ECB and 2008 saw 1799 teams enter the competition. The current holders are North Middlesex Cricket Club.

Teams successful at County Finals this year will then enter the National Stages of the competition. This section of the competition has been dramatically increased this year due to the number of Regional Finals being halved to only four.

This will now include one or two play-off rounds prior to the Regional Final.

All the Regional Finals will consist of four teams with semi-finals followed by a Regional Final and a third place play-off – so each club will have two matches on the day.

The dates for the various Play-off Rounds and Regional Finals are:

• Tuesday July 28 at Wolverhampton CC (Reserve day Thursday July 30)
• Wednesday July 29 at Woodhouse Grange CC, Yorkshire (Reserve day Thurs July 30)
• Wednesday July 29 at Axminster CC, Devon (Reserve day Thurs July 30)
• Wednesday July 29 at Bishop’s Stortford CC (Reserve day Thurs July 30)

Further details and competition rules can be found on the PDF to download below:
MCC Spirit of Cricket Club Championship 2009 (1.0 MB)

The National Finals Festival at Oakham School will involve the four Regional Finals Winners. The Finals Festival has been reduced from a week to just two days and the competing teams will assemble at Oakham on the afternoon of Wednesday August 12.

All teams play in a round-robin with two matches on the Thursday and the final set of matches on the Friday morning.

Clubs may also find the press release template below useful to download for submitting to local media:
MCC Spirit of Cricket Club Championship 2009 - Press Release Template (1.9 MB)