Healey Through To West Yorkshire Final

The 2010 Drax Kwik Cricket Competition qualifier was the big St John Fisher School Sports Partnership event last week as 70 children from seven junior schools took part in the Year 3/4 event at Batley Girls High School on Tuesday 11^th May 2010.  Now in its fourth year, the Drax Cup is the biggest cricket competition for the Under 9’s age group in the Country. Last year some 350 schools and 3500 children from across Yorkshire took part. The event is sponsored by Drax Power Limited and organised by The Yorkshire County Cricket Club in conjunction with Yorkshire Cricket Board, Yorkshire Schools Cricket Association and School Sports Partnerships. It follows a family cluster festival format which will feed a West Yorkshire final, which in turn will provide a qualifier for a Yorkshire final which this year will be played at Headingley Carnegie Stadium on Sunday 04^th July prior to the Yorkshire v Warwickshire Friends Provident Twenty20 game.  Teams from Park Road, Carlinghow, Westmoor, St Saviours, Hanging Heaton, Healey and Eastborough took part in the event which started in bright sunshine but was blighted by the weather and finished up being concluded indoors. In true 20/20 fashion the competition provided great excitement for the competing schools. After an opening round of matches both the semi finals proved to be tight contests as Healey narrowly defeated St Saviours and Park Road defeated Carlinghow in an even closer game.  The final, between Healey and Park Road produced a thrilling climax to the competition as it produced some explosive hitting and wonderful fielding. Healey batted first and thanks to three very productive partnerships of 35, 34 and 32 posted a very useful net score of 107. The loss of a couple of early wickets meant Park Road were always slightly behind the asking rate and despite a 36 run partnership by their penultimate pair they fell 25 runs short of their target. The match however proved once again just how important fielding and catching are in cricket as both sides batting and bowling were relatively even but Healey’s prevention of boundaries and catching in the final analysis proved decisive.  Congratulations therefore to Healey who now proceed to represent the Partnership at the West Yorkshire final which is to be held at Pudsey on 22^nd June. However all seven teams should be congratulated for their efforts, spirit, enthusiasm and commitment in providing a memorable event.  One final thanks to Batley Girls High School for allowing us to use their venue and to the 5 young leaders from Earlsheaton who umpired, scored and fully support the event professionally and wholeheartedly. These were Haseeb Younis, Hasham Khayyam, Janzaab Ahmed, Kashif Asaf and Youssef El-Manea.