Great bowling, fielding, keeping captaincy, camaraderie

Today - Maisie and Jess excepted - we batted like billionaires. Unfortunately our billionaire shots were all played to lovely, straight, good length balls - which we missed - and got us out. The result was that our total - batting first - was inadequate. Maisie and Jess showed us what to do, but unfortunately theirs was the last wicket partnership, so the lessons could not be applied in practice.

But we are a pretty handy bowling team, and actually we did more than just get back some self-respect when it came to our turn to bowl. Jasmine and Lakeesha bowled beautifully, Jess kept fabulously and we fielded tenaciously, never giving up. For a while we had Hampstead in a bit of trouble, but the target we had set them was just too small and our change bowlers (who all did well) eventually had to concede defeat.

Anna did a superlative job as skipper when we fielded, placing the field very sensibly and making sure her team's heads never went down. Alexie, in particular, fielded magnificently. I was proud of the girls' response and with 30 more runs on the board we would have won. But we needed to have batted much better than we did. Let's practise the foward defensive this Sunday!

Big thanks to Millie and Iffah who both stepped up to the u14s for the first team, and acquitted themselves very well (when we were bowling!).