On 6th August the Sapphires went to Esher CC to play a triangular tournament with Esher and Walton on Thames. First up the Sapphires played Walton on Thames. Mitcham won the toss and elected to field. The first Walton pair started slowly – with tidy bowling from Keli and Solomia, having put 15 on the board after 3 overs. Walton’s second and third pairs accelerated through the middle overs adding a further 45, then scoring was brought to a halt by another great over from Keli. Walton then brought on their strongest pair for the final overs. Solomia bowled a strong second over, taking a wicket, caught at mid wicket by Julia. Walton finished on 89 after their 12 overs.

In reply Keli and Davina opened the batting, both scoring runs. The Sapphires’ second pair were Ellie and Caroline who took the score up to 13, then Vasi and Rajani came to the crease, they kept the runs coming, but also more wickets fell. The final pair came to the crease with 85 runs needed in their 3 overs. Solomia and Julia lost a wicket to a run out before they got their running between the wickets right, but finished with a flourish with a boundary 4 from Julia off the last ball and Solomia clocking up the Sapphires’ top score of 7. The team total was 18, so Walton were the winners. But compared with the previous game against Walton in July the Sapphires had made a lot of progress with tidying up their bowling and most of the team made runs off the bat.

The second game was against the home team. Mitcham lost the toss and were put in to bat. Keli and Davina opened the batting again facing some tricky bowling. They added 12 of their 3 overs – 6 runs from Keli was the top score from the Sapphires. Ellie and Caroline saw the total rise to 24. Then Vasi and Rajani came to the crease and took the score to 52. Solomia and Julia finished the innings taking the Sapphires total to 71.

Vasi opened the bowling for the Esher innings with a tidy over which included a wicket caught by Keli at mid wicket. Esher were 18 after their first 3 overs. Keli had a tidy over against the Esher second pair and then Solomia came on to bowl taking two wickets – the first a caught and bowled and the second caught behind by Wicketkeeper Vasi. So half way through the innings Esher were on 27. The third Esher pair took the score to 52 so Esher needed 20 runs off their final 3 overs. Keli bowled another great over where Esher only added 2. Julia took the death over, constraining scoring so that Esher finished 5 runs short on 67. This meant that the Sapphires had secured their first ever win in a close match.

The whole team had played well, much improved bowling and batting across the piece. But special mention must go to Keli for her solid bowling and batting, as well as taking a turn behind the wicket when Vasi was bowling. Great performance by Vasi taking her first caught behind. But the best all around performance was from our youngest player Solomia who took two wickets and also batted purposefully and effectively.

Well done Sapphires!