BUCS Indoors - Cecily Scutt

Our first players post comes from Durham Women's Cricket player Cecily Scutt, a First Year Undergraduate studying Ancient History.

"The women’s team at Durham have been training really hard this winter, showing great commitment attending 9am sessions on a Sunday morning, the majority of us still half asleep. Before Christmas, we had our Regional round of the BUCS indoor competition which was held in Newcastle. We played some excellent indoor cricket with contributions from every member of the team, dominating both our games with convincing 70 and 30 run victories over Manchester and Leeds Met, the best women’s university team in the country. We were all so pleased with this result and it meant we were through to the final rounds held in Cardiff on the 26^th February.

 We began our trek to Cardiff on Friday 25^th, the morning after the Durham University Cricket Dinner- a fantastic night which was organised by our own Holly Colvin, which raised a significant amount of money for the club.  So there were a few sore heads that morning and the 7-hour journey felt like it would never end. However, upon arriving in Cardiff, there was little disagreement that we needed to begin our search for somewhere to eat. We ended up in Nando’s then headed back to get an early night.

Our matches in the final rounds included Cardiff University, Sheffield Hallam and Brighton. We bowled and fielded really well in our first game, but as the indoor hall was split in two to accommodate two games at once, the area we were playing in was tiny compared to what we were used to back in Durham. Unfortunately we struggled to get to grips with the running in such a small space which resulted in a few hesitations and run outs and we were unlucky to lose our first game against Cardiff by two runs which was disappointing. However, we came back quickly, adapting to the space and beat Sheffield Hallam by 36 runs. This game saw an excellent opening partnership for us from our captain Helena Stolle and Holly Colvin which allowed the rest of the team to play freely, most notably some unrivalled straight sixes from Genny Porter. Again, we bowled and fielded with purpose against Brighton University and got them all out for 70 runs. We won this convincingly, with the loss of only one wicket. Overall, it was a great day. Although we were disappointed to not have got through to the final, we were encouraged by contributions from all the members of the team throughout the day and look forward to a successful season outdoors, starting with our first league fixture being Leeds Met on 27^th April."

Cecily Scutt, a First Year Ancient History Undergraduate.