Having heard about the strength of Shaw’s Under 15’s this year the opposition today decided to join forces and thus Shaw were once more down in Denton playing against the combined Denton St Lawrence and Woodley cricket clubs. Theo was really excited for this game as he kept an eye on the always reliable Play cricket app from Cyprus.

The opposition spectators were all (well one of them was) still talking about the first team's fantastic T20 win the previous day and Captain Isaac was intent to put the pressure on to the opposition by electing to bat when he won the toss. Has Isaac got a double headed coin? He does seem to win the toss a lot.

The opening partnership lottery in the final league game of the season was exactly that with an electronic wheel deciding the position of Shaw's batting line up and yet somehow Isaac was selected at his usual position of one and perennial tail ender Grace was more than happy with her position of eleven. Noah, having turned up to Shaw instead of Denton, was still unaware of his position. Theo, sunning himself in Cyprus was heard to say “Gosh, it’s hot”.

Isaac, opening alongside Bruce kept his rich vein of form running hitting some lovely shots including three fours. Bruce was ticking along nicely until our first run out since 17th June, that’s over a month, which with our calling is a miracle in itself.

*In case you're interested, talking of miracles…. Saint Lawrence is the patron saint of bakers, which Bruce’s mum must pray to religiously to provide the amazing scran on offer at Shaw CC the home of Eddie's traditionals, the sponsors of tonights match….report. Free cake on Friday Claire?

Lucas came in as Isaac missed a straight one and so all of a sudden Woodley cricket club sensed blood. Even Theo was worried and he was 2,000 miles away. Bazza came in and was more than happy to get off the mark. Then saw that Noah had arrived at his second cricket club of the evening and thought you know what let him have nine balls to see what he can do. Turns out he could do a lot. Scoring 23 runs before deciding that the extra drive was too much and getting out. At which point we now had Charlie and Rossi at the crease. Rossi took heed of his Dad’s advice to play straight and ease himself in by hitting a four and a six in his first over. The young pair put on 41 runs together to leave Shaw on 120 for 5 at the end of their 20 overs. Theo remarked to his Dad that “That means the opposition requires more than a run a ball to beat us”.

Euan and Grace again opened the bowling and restricted the DSL/W openers. This was despite Grace limping lamely into her run up and yet firing that ball down consistently accurately. Apparently this was due to a swimming pool incident, we all hope that Theo doesn’t suffer one of these during his 53 day hiatus in Cyprus.

The openers partnership was broken from a direct hit from 45 yards (It goes up by 5 yards everytime I ask him) by Euan standing at cover (cover what?). The opposition were on 31 at this point and starting to look like a chase of 121 was attainable. They put on another 15 runs before the guile of Lucas’s spin tempted them into a lofted shot where Euan decided to juggle the ball before catching it in his armpit and both openers were now out. After ten overs DSL/W were 42/2.

We know the under 15’s don’t like to make things easy though! Will and Isaac combined for the third wicket before the opposition looked like they wanted this and raced to 70 runs with some huge hitting. I can’t remember who was bowling, sorry. At this point, Otis stepped up! Two wickets in two balls finally put the game to bed. Surely he should have been allowed a seventh ball in the over to attempt for a hat-trick rather than waiting until his first ball of the next over? Another requested rule change! Having said that, his potential hat-trick ball was incredibly close but didn’t quite make it. This was despite the fact that Theo and his family were screaming for it and woke up their Cypriot neighbours.

Bruce and Laila closed out the bowling to leave Shaw with a convincing 23 run victory. The parents then frantically added up how many victories the team had managed this season, thankfully they only needed one hand, but with a tie and an abandoned game we actually were undefeated in most of our fixtures this season.

This has been a great season to watch and the players and coaching staff should be immensely proud of how they’ve come back from previous difficult seasons. A big thanks to Craig, Sam and Josh for all they have done and that is the end of the season……..or is it? Summer league anyone?

Match Report by Roger Mellie - Lead sports writer Shaw Independent

You may have noticed that I’ve been trying not to disturb our Chairman of the Junior Committee so hopefully his son got the requisite number of mentions and he won’t need to do any editing ;-)