Cyprus Youth Cricket Tour to Holland

A Squad of 16 young cricketers representing Cyprus have just returned from a very successful Tour to Holland. Our first two matches were in Rotterdam and the weather was hot and sunny throughout

On 2^nd July they played against a very strong Under 15 Holland B Team whose opening batsman Tobias Visee is a regular first team player. He got his team off to great start hitting 74 runs before being caught by Papaonisiforou. Holland went on to score 273 for 9 wickets in their 40 overs. The most effective bowler for Cyprus was Paphos Schoolboy George Papaonisforou who took 3 wickets for 46 runs in his 7 overs. With victory an almost impossible task Team Coach Colin Relton advised cautious batting with the aim being to bat out their 40 overs and make the Dutch Team at least work hard for their expected win.

The Cyprus Batsmen followed their Coaches orders and batted bravely against some tight bowling. Batting for two and a half hours and staying there for 38 of their 40 overs Cyprus were bowled out for 108 runs. Although helped by 44 extras, this was a good performance against a team representing one of Europes top four Nations.

The following day our opposition was the Holland Under 13 Team. This time Cyprus batted first scoring 138 runs from their allotted 35 overs. Opening the batting Kabir Malhotra the Cyprus Captain scored an excellent 56 runs. Supported for 30 minutes by Harry Calloway (9 runs) a middle order collapse was worrying when Cyprus lost 4 wickets for only 8 runs. This was halted by some patient defensive batting by no. 8 batsman Robert Patsalides, who although scoring only 7 runs did well to stay at the crease for 40 minutes to enable his Captain Kabir to build a respectable total. With Patsalides caught with less than 5 overs remaining the next batsman : William Carr was under orders to score quick runs. He did just that scoring 10 runs not out. Best bowler for Holland was D Barem with figures of 7 wickets for 31 runs in 7 overs. Holland replied by passing their target of 138 runs after only 22 overs to win by 7 wickets. Their top scorer Van De Burg scored 61 not out. The three wickets were shared by bowlers Calloway, Bailey and Malhotra.

On day three the team travelled to Amsterdams’ Amstelveen Ground to watch Holland play One Day experts Sri Lanka in a One Day International. Fresh from their 5-0 victory over England, Sri Lanka scored a massive 443 runs to set a new World Record. The boys enjoyed the day watching the experts and collecting the stars autographs.

On 5^th July it was on to Antwerp to face a Belgium Youth Team. Knowing the strength of the Cyprus Team Belgium rested some of their strongest players to give some of their younger players the opportunity to play International Cricket. Tight bowling from Cyprus meant that the scoring rate was low. Belgium batted out their 40 overs for only 121 runs with their top scorer Shuklar (20 runs) assisted by Weighill (10 runs) and Court (10 runs).

George Papaonisiforou again performed well to take 3 wickets for 12 runs in his 8 overs. Next best was Liam Fletcher with 2 wickets for 13 runs from 7 overs. Chasing an achievable 121 Cyprus also found the runs slow to score. Losing the wickets of Hill and Bailey cheaply a partnership with opening batsman Malhotra and no. 4 bat Fletcher took the score to 53 for 3 wickets when Malhotra was caught for 29 to again top score for Cyprus. With 25 overs still left Cyprus could afford to score slowly so long as they didn’t lose their remaining batsmen. Fletcher batted for over an hour for his 13 runs before being bowled by Shuklar. After the 34^th over Cyprus were still on only 117 runs, and they were down to their lasting batting pair of Stainton and Goyal. In the 35^th over Goyal kept his nerve to hit the winning run to score 4 not out to record Cyprus Crickets first ever International Win ! Best bowler for Belgium was N. Parikh with 3 wickets for 10 runs in 7.5 overs.

The boys returned to Cyprus hoping that the experience gained will help them succeed next year when they compete in the European Under 15s Division 2 Tournament which is likely to be held in La Manga Spain in August 2007. (not yet confirmed)

Cyprus is represented in Div 4 of the European Championships in Belgium from 26^th to 30^th August 2006. For more information including details of the many Sponsors who help us achieve this see www.cypruscricket.com. Tel. Steve Carr 99696685.