It has now been finalized that Luxembourg’s young cricketers will compete in their first formal international Twenty20 tournament in July. Luxembourg will be competing against the national U15 teams from Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland in a 4 day tournament staged near Copenhagen at Svanholm Cricket ground. Whilst Luxembourg has competed in similar friendly tournaments before, this one will be the first to be played under the International Cricket Council (ICC) standards and be formally recognized as international status in nature.
Luxembourg’s young cricketers have been steadily developing over a number of years now with a growing number of keen players training and playing regularly in Luxembourg and Belgium. Supported by the Luxembourg Cricket Federation and the Optimists Cricket Club, the junior players have played in local matches but also against teams from Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and France as well as featuring very regularly for the adult teams at various levels. The Luxembourg Optimists team are the U15 champions for 2010 in the Belgian league and undefeated thus far in the 2011 season.
However, this upcoming tournament will be a clear step up in class against opposition from much larger and more-established cricket-playing nations. Timothy Barker, captain of the U15 side, who made his maiden century last weekend playing for the Optimists Adult team against Basel, commented, “We have played in Copenhagen for the last few years at cricket festivals, so we know the place well. Also, we are in a great run of form this season, so we will enter this tournament with high confidence, but we know this will be our biggest test so far. It is a very exciting opportunity and we are training hard to be fully ready.”
The team to play in Copenhagen for Luxembourg will be Timothy Barker, Thomas Martin, James Barker, Joachim Schiodt, Mark Radley, Marcus Cope, Rishabh Patil, Christopher Fry, William Cope, Alex Martin and Isak Schiodt.
The tournament starts on Friday July 1st and regular updates of the team’s progress can be found on the blogsite www.lcfjuniors.wordpress.com
The Juniors have a busy weekend ahead of them as well. On Saturday at 10am, they play in the Belgium U15s league at home against the Royal Brussels Cricket Club and then the older Juniors play at 3pm in the Adults LCF League at home against WOCC, followed as normal by the training session on Sunday from 10.30am to 12.30am.