Surrey are ECB/Lord's Taverners U15 County Champions

Surrey won the first ECB Under 15 County Championship, sponsored by The Lord's Taverners, when they defeated Devon in the final match of the Festival at Oundle School for the three sides that had won their Area Division 1. Surrey's victory followed two drawn matches, and a third draw would have meant that the title would have been decided on the bonus points accumulated during the week.

In the opening match Surrey, asked to bat, compiled 167 for 8 and declared after one ball of the 57th over to avoid the risk of conceding an additional bowling point to Yorkshire. The side batting first is only able to bat for 57 of the minimum 105 overs that must be bowled in the day, although they can declare earlier and only score batting points during the first 48 overs of their innings. Surrey gained 1 batting point when passing 125 runs and Yorkshire pocketed 3 bowling points when they took the 7th wicket. Surrey had been faltering against an accurate attack on a slow pitch with little bounce, and had recovered from 22 for 4 thanks mainly to Ben Kingsnorth and Anthony Shales. However when the 8th wicket fell at 105 a low score seemed in prospect. Laurie Evans and Akbar Ansari added 62 to post a reasonable target.

In reply Yorkshire made a steady start but the introduction of the spinners saw the scoring dry up and in the end they managed only 90 for 7 in 48 overs to secure a draw, with Surrey taking 3 bowling points to give them 4 in total against the 3 gained by Yorkshire.

On another fine day Yorkshire batted first against Devon, with Phil Critchley (58) and Greg Wood (32) putting on 92 for the first wicket. However the Devon captain, James Carr, removed them both on the way to a 5 wicket haul and with another spinner, Matthew Cooke, taking 3 wickets Yorkshire subsided to 141 all out in 50.5 overs.

Devon lost early wickets and went into the final hour with their last pair, Jack Porter and Mickey Wilkinson, together. Yorkshire tried everything to part them but without success as the pair held on for a draw, Yorkshire taking 4 bowling and 1 batting point and Devon 4 bowling points. Luke Townsend with 4 for 41 and Andrew Bilton with 3 for 15, both from 17 overs, did the damage for Yorkshire.

In the final match Surrey made slow but steady progress, with runs always difficult to come by and four wickets falling to LBW decisions as they reached 172 for 6, declaring after 54 overs with 1 batting point secured. Tom Parker scored 34 and Matthew Cooke took 3 for 47 in 20 overs.

Surrey needed to take 9 Devon wickets to gain maximum bowling points to draw level on bonus points with Yorkshire (and win the title, having scored more bonus points in the match between the two sides) - Devon needed to win to gain match points and remove bonus points from the equation. Once again the faster bowlers could make little impact, although scoring was never easy, and after Josh Bess and Dan Bowser had put on 43 for the first wicket Akbar Ansari and Simon King worked their way through the Devon batting, each taking 4 wickets, and Devon were all out in the 50th over for 110.

Frank Kemp, ECB Cricket Operations Manager, thanked The Lord's Taverners for their generous support of the Under 15 County Championship, Oundle School for hosting the event and Ken Lake and his team of helpers for organising the competition so efficiently. He then presented individual plaques to the scorers, umpires and the three teams before presenting the Lord's Taverners Trophy to Alan Cope, the Surrey captain.

Summary Results

Surrey U15s 167 - 8 dec, Yorkshire U15s 90 - 7 Match drawn
Yorkshire U15s 141, Devon 114 - 9 Match drawn
Surrey 172 - 6 dec, Devon 110 Surrey won by 62 runs