All week, many of our boys and girls have been taking part in the Capital Kids Cricket Challenge. This is a fun competition open to the junior ranks of all clubs in London and also much further beyond. In fact two of the clubs taking part were from California and Beiruit (see below).

The competition involved a challenge for each of the weekdays. The five challenges were:

- Number of claps whilst throwing the ball up in the air and catching it
- Keepy uppies on face of bat (or side of bat for 13 YOs and above)
- Number of runs between wickets 7 metres apart in a minute
- Number of uninterrupted catches against a wall 1.5m away within 2 minutes
- Number of shots with another family member in a tennis like rally using cricket bats within 2 minutes

There were a number of sensational performances in the week including new member Jay Madan doing 1,312 keep uppies on side of his bat. Even our groundsman extraordinaire Oz entered into the spirit by giving a perfect demo of how to conserve energy in the
the running between wickets challenge (we have video evidence of both!).

But the best thing about the whole thing was engaging around 70 N Midd juniors in fun and (mildly) competitive cricket activity during the week. And the end result – a brilliant second place, losing out only to the Cedars CC from Beiruit, yes Beiruit! This club combines kids from three different refugee camps and is managed by none other than N Midd Legend Richard Verity.

The Challenge is running again this week. Let’s see if we can go one better.