Bingham Cricket Club’s junior players have been taking part in the Autumn Indoor Cricket Leagues at Basford’s Pass Move Grin sports centre. A hugely successful campaign saw four of their teams ranging from Under 9 to Under 13 making it through to finals weekend just before Christmas. This was achieved by finishing in the top 4 in the league competitions that ran over the previous 10 weeks.

Bingham enjoyed a glorious finals day with the Under 9s and 11s winning their competitions and the Under 13s narrowly losing out in a tense.

Indoor Cricket is played inside a flexible cage and runs are scored for hitting areas of the cage wall as well as running between the wickets. 5 runs are taken from the batting team’s score for each wicket lost.

The format saw the teams that had finished 3rd and 4th in the league playing off for the right to play the league runner-up and the winner of this game would take on the top placed team in the final.

The Bingham Under 9s had the hardest job to do as they finished 3rd in their competition, but saw off Notts and Arnold in their quarter-final by 174 runs to 111 (at U9 level, teams start on 100 runs). In a nail-biting semi-final, it looked as if the team had lost too many wickets, scoring only 106, but they pulled off an amazing bowling and fielding effort to beat Cavaliers and Carrington by 12 runs.

The final was another close affair, with Wollaton setting Bingham 128 to win, and the game came down to the last ball with Bingham finishing on 132 to win the trophy!

The Under 11s finished second in their league and had to overcome the Notts and Arnold second team in their semi-final 105-39, and beat the first team on the last ball of the game 55-53!

By now, it seemed like a clean sweep of the three age groups was a real possibility as the Under 13s sealed their finals spot by beating Cavaliers and Carrington 79-54 in the semi-finals. Once again, it was a very close final but Notts and Arnold prevailed, 70-57.

It was an incredible afternoon for Bingham, for whom 49 players had represented the various age groups over the winter. The u9s and an all-girls team will represent the club in the Spring Indoor league.