Over the weekend of November 20th and 21st, the Luxembourg Cricket Federation sent a selected team of eight under 11 cricketers to an Indoor tournament in Geneva organised by Gingins Cricket Club. The tournament was organised amongst 5 teams representing Zurich, Léman, Luxembourg and two teams from Gingins, near Geneva with all teams playing each other in 15 over matches. This represented the first time Luxembourg had entered such a tournament at this age group and so the journey to Switzerland was full of nervous anticipation.
However, the 3 fixtures on the Saturday would prove that Luxembourg's young cricketers are developing strongly as they blew away their opponents with fine team displays. In the first game, Luxembourg were put into bat and quickly established a good run rate setting Gingins Greens with a total of 110 to chase thanks to fine batting from Andrew Fry who would remain unbeaten throughout the day. After taking to the field, the game was almost done after the first over with the rapid pace of Marcus Cope removing the first 2 batsmen without a run scored. There was never going to be a recovery from this and Luxembourg finally won with an impressive 77 run margin. The second match was expected to be much tougher against a strong-looking Zurich team but it started in very dramatic fashion. Luxembourg chose to bowl and the first over ended in 3 wickets to Marcus Cope, all clean bowled. After this disaster, Zurich did well to scrape together a total of 41 but Luxembourg coolly reached their target after just 6 overs without a single lost wicket. Next it was the turn of Léman to suffer as Luxembourg decided to bat and posted another tough target of 111 thanks to strong hitting from Alex Barzin and Max McVeigh. Predictably, the Luxembourg bowlers would prove too strong and this time it was Thomas Martin and Isak Schiodt that did the damage with fine straight and economical bowling. Léman could only reach 42 leaving another huge margin of victory for Luxembourg.
Performing equally as well was Gingins Gold and so Sunday morning meant that the 2 unbeaten teams would face other. This proved to be a real fight and despite good bowling and excellent keeping of Joachim Schiodt, three half chances in the field were all missed which ultimately would prove costly. Luxembourg faced a target of 85 to win and despite determined efforts, it was the catching ability that would prove the difference with 4 batsmen holing out when looking ready to dominate. Despite the valiant last efforts of Surya Selvaraj, Luxembourg fell short by 17 runs and so finished the tournament in second place. Despite a few tears, the journey home was full of positive memories from an excellent tournament. For any young hopefuls wishing to take up cricket and participate in such tournaments, regular indoor training continues throughout the winter starting at 3pm at the International School of Luxembourg.