One thing about me is that I love sports. I have trialled for all the school sports teams and have made them all. I really enjoy going out to tournaments and etc.. but in this blog, I will talk about 1 specific sport. Cricket.
Cricket is my 2nd favourite sport after football. There are usually 13-16 players in a team including subs. There are 11 players on the pitch at once. In cricket, your aim is to make as many runs as you can. An inning is when you have your overs. For example, we played 5 overs. Every over has 6 bowls, so we had 30 bowls and we had to make as many runs as we could. The innings can go up to any number of overs unless you’re playing limited overs. So after you make your runs in your batting innings your opponents need to chase that amount. So if my team got 35 runs the other team must get 36 to win.
I woke up and went to school knowing we had the tournament. Our team had 13 players in it. We went to the tournament thinking there were going to be 11 players on at once. But instead of 11 at once there were 9 only. There were 5 bowlers and 4 fielders. I was one of the bowlers there were 5 other bowlers too. One of the bowlers is subbed for each match. Me and my team always wanted to bowl and field first because then we would know how much we had to make to beat the opponent team. We got to field and bowl first most of the time so we were pretty lucky. At the end of the tournament we ended up coming first! So we made our way to counties which was being held in a week. In that week we had training after school and we even used to play during lunch breaks sometimes. We wanted to win counties or even come in the top 3.
Counties, it was a big day coming. I rush to school and put the school sports uniform on. We went to the tournament at 9 AM and got there at about 9:15 AM. Our first match was at 10:20 AM and we won that match. It was against the school that came 2nd in the first tournament. We won most of the matches and finished top in our pool. Now it was time to play semi finals and finals. The semi finals were really hard. There were 4 bowls left and we needed 3 runs. The 2nd bowl of the over goes wide and it’s a re-bowl and now we need 2 runs from 4 bowls. 3rd bowl of the over with no runs. 2 more bowls left and we need 2 runs. The 5th bowl the batsmen got 1 sneaky run by nicking it to the side. Since the bowler was a really fast bowler, the ball went far even if they nicked it. 1 more bowl and 1 more run. The batsmen were so concentrated. It went wide and they got the run and won. But since the batsmen wanted to win they ran twice anyways and got 3 runs instead of 1. We ended up winning the semi finals now what was left was the finals. In the finals we were bowling first. We were playing Pukekohe intermediate and it was the best school there. Shabd one of our teammates had just retrieved his bat after the semi finals. He was really happy so he was playing really well. We did the toss and got fielding and bowling in the start. We were doing well but at the end Pukekohe made 35 runs. Shabd and another batsmen were opening in our batting innings. Shabd was smashing everything out of the park. Eventually the other batsman got out than Cooper got in the match. Cooper is our team captain. Cooper and Shabd made a lot of runs but then another wicket fell… our team captain got out. Then another batsmen came into the game. Shabd was smashing everything and they ran so much that eventually we won the match and we won the counties too! We came first!!!
Personally this was one of my favourite tournaments, sadly we didn’t have Auckland champs although we would have made it to Auckland champs. The tournament had a beautiful day and it was sunny all through the day. My team and I had a great experience. This was my first tournament where I have won counties with my team. I remember it all like yesterday. It was a super fun day and I will never forget it. We beat all of the hardest teams and they all had great positivity and great sportsmanship. I had a great day and I think my team did too. This was one of the best days of sports I have ever had!
