Stoolball news

This year’s Icklesham Ladies tournament was greeted by glorious weather on a brilliant Sunday afternoon. Icklesham Stoolball Club would like to thank all the teams who took part: Brightling, Peasmarsh, Robertsbridge, Pett, Crowhurst and Hooe. Icklesham had two teams in and, unlike most, had enough players to achieve this comfortably. Heidi Carter of Icklesham Stoolball Club sent us this report.

Icklesham B, made up of our younger team members, played extremely well and proved that they will be the future of our club. Icklesham A had the best day. Everyone says it’s a poor show winning your own tournament, but when we haven’t won it before it is kind of special. The five senior team members of this team had over 110 years experience between them.

The tournament started well with us beating Robertsbridge (the in-form team). Louisa won the toss and elected to field. Robertsbridge only managed 86 off of the 6 overs. Icklesham A matched that score with an over to spare and sensible batting from Rachel Jury and Heidi Carter saw Icklesham sail home comfortably.

Up next was Crowhurst who have been a tricky opponent this season. Crowhurst posted a total of 74. We made hard work of this game – for some reason we couldn’t find the boundaries quite as easily as in the first game, but we eventually got into action and produced a win.

The last game in the group was a decider between us and Peasmarsh. Having lost the toss we were put into bat and had a slow couple of overs, but the fourth over proved to be important and that gave the girls some motivation and ended up with a healthy total of 110. Peasmarsh started off well but were eager to get their best batsman in (and having to rotate the batting proved they may have worked things out a little wrongly), so run-outs came thick and fast, but with two overs left it looked like it was going to be a close match. Icklesham A ended up winning by only 10 which placed them in the final against Pett.

Again we lost the toss and were put into bat. Another slow start proved frustrating for batsmen and supporters, but like in the Peasmarsh game the fourth over proved to be vital with a huge 31 being scored off of it, and the girls again being motivated to get more and more. The final run tally was 99.

Mean and moody was the team talk at the beginning of the Pett innings as Janet and Claire walked out to bat. Janet having been the top scoring batsman of the day, we needed to get her out. The first over was carted around the pitch for 20. In the second over a nice little teaser was tossed up and hit towards the boundary, and underneath it was Vicki Baxter (who felt that it was a lot of pressure) and held the catch beautifully.

The overs went by, wickets falling until the last over proved a shaky affair, especially getting to the last ball with 10 to win. A couple of extras raised the pressure before finally a single was scored on the last ball. The last over seemed to go on forever. Icklesham A won. It was such a brilliant victory, not because we beat Pett, but for the more senior people within the club they saw something very special from the young girls they had coached and taught.

Well done Icklesham: a good team performance all round.