Crouch End 332
Southgate 300

24 over pairs match, scoring starts at 200

Southgate’s Women’s team made their outside debut on Sunday 19th April in a pre-season friendly match against Crouch End Women. The softball league the team are competing in this season is 8-a-side pairs cricket, but with 10 players available for Southgate and 12 for Crouch End, it was agreed that we’d play a 6 pairs match with one of Southgate’s pairs batting twice (and Crouch End only fielding with 10).

Captain Emma Dangerfield won the toss and chose to field. Southgate’s bowling and fielding has improved steadily since the team was founded and the team picked up a total of 8 wickets. Every Southgate player bowled at least one over and everybody bowled well, so I don’t want to single anybody out, but there was some great catching from Alanka Goonawardena and Devki Shah.

Southgate’s response got off to a bit of a shaky start, with first game nerves perhaps playing a part. Soph Meyer and Piumi Bandara combined well in the middle of the innings, adding 26 runs without being dismissed. Geethika Rajapakse and Yolanda Mackie batted first and last as a pair and finished particularly strongly, racking up 34 runs for the loss of 1 wicket in the final 4 overs.

In the end Southgate lost by 32 runs having lost 10 wickets to Crouch End’s 8. With 5 runs lost per wicket that’s obviously an area we can look to improve upon going forward. Crouch End’s women’s team is much more established than ours, but other than their one star player who contributed 42 runs and 3 wickets, you really couldn’t tell which was the less experienced team.

Playing at the resplendent looking Walker Ground bathed in April sunshine was a great way to kick off Southgate Women’s first full season. Onwards and upwards!

Max Joseph