U15 Coloured Clothing Tournament

The Swiss U15s returned to Leicester, UK in August 2018 to try to defend the U16 Colour Clothing Tournament title that they had won the previous year.  This year the format was an intense 5 days with a T20 match each morning and afternoon.  The four teams competing in the tournament would play each other three times in a league to decide who would compete in the final and 3rd / 4th play-off in the final matches on Friday afternoon.  The other teams were the Blasters, a representative team from Merseyside and the Sixers and Rhinos who had players from both City Cricket Academy and players from the residential summer cricket school. 
The challenge for the Swiss touring team was how to adapt from our normal 8 a-side games played on artificial pitches to playing on grass wickets against sides who play lots of 11 a-side cricket.  The team coped admirably with the challenge, learning through the matches and by the end of the week were a well drilled unit in the field and the most economical bowling unit.  Our batsman, who struggled to score at 5 runs per over at the start of the week were consistently scoring at 8 runs per over.  In the league stage whilst we beat the Sixers the eventual runners up three times, we lost twice to the Rhinos who were the arguably the weakest team and as a result missed out on a place in the final by 3 bonus points.  We finished on 72 points to the Sixers 75.  In our final match the 3rd / 4th play-off, we bowled out the Rhinos for 99 and knocked off the runs in 12 overs to win by 6 wickets.  This was a true reflection of how much the team had improved over the previous 9 matches.
The final was deservedly won by the Blasters who scored heavily all week.  Swiss captain James W won the best bowler award for his 14 wickets. Eden W finished the week with 10 wickets, Aryan L 9 and Noah C 8. Top run scorers for the Swiss team were Luke Wilkinson with 187, James W 153, Ismail Z 123 and Amogh R 114.  In addition to playing 10 matches, the team were able to benefit from a batting and bowling master class with professional coach Ben Smith and were coached through one of the matches by former professional cricketer Laurie Potter.