A day to celebrate and £1350 raised for charity

Having spent time in Harefield Hospital over the winter, teenager Ben Jones decided to hold a charity match to raise money for them. This took place on Saturday 23rd April between Merstham's youngsters and an adult side. Here he reports on the occasion, which now could become an annual fixture.

Wow, what a day. In total we raised around a sum of £1,350 for Harefield hospital. An unbelievable sum which I think is mainly a credit to the people we have at this cricket club.

None of this would have been possible without the donations in the form of the raffle, the barbeque sales or especially the mammoth donation by Richard Pitt of the signed Freddie Flintoff shirt.

This will be hung high in the clubhouse for all to enjoy, thanks to it being loaned back to the club by winning bidder Alex Reeves.

So, I would like to thank everyone at the club for the support and enthusiasm.

But aside from the donations and goodwill - the cricket. Which is what it's all about, was phenomenal. The reason why we created this cup is to showcase the talent which we have at the club but to also bridge a gap between colts cricket and adult cricket and I believe we have done that.

There wasn't a single player in the colts side that shouldn't be playing adult cricket this year. They really put up a great fight on a challenging track against an incredibly capable adult side.

The bowling for the colts was opened by the two pacers from the U16s Matt and Max who delivered one of the cleanest and most mature spells I've seen from an opening pair in a while, it was like they'd done it all their lives.

The middle overs were tight, Lakshin and James Cambell bowled economically and took wickets, Lakshin taking the best of the bowling figures. another thing to note is only one catch was dropped by the colts in their innings. Tight in the field.

The batting was opened by Connor Thorpe and James Peters and after an early wicket James and Hamdan Rashid showed incredible levels of discipline to steady the ship.

Hamdan's innings eventually ended on 30 odd and James was incredibly unlucky to end on 49. Those scores along with Jasper Tomlin's calm and composed 20, which was an amazing feat for the 13-year-old, left us about 30 runs away from our target of 178 which we unfortunately missed out on by 10 runs in the end.

For the adults, chairman Richard Feist took two wickets, Chris Clayson bowled on his return after a couple of years, Finn Harris top scored and Alex Reeves finished on 18 not out with Rob Harris (20+).

Despite not quite achieving the target set, overall all the youngsters played their part and everyone played a great game. Hopefully, we can make this a yearly event with new players coming through each year.