An over abundance of games too early in the season in both the Surrey and Berkshire leagues combined with a young and inexperienced team - we played most of our league games with few of the players from last year's under 12s, as most were lost to football, common entrance or other school commitments - resulted in what on paper could be deemed a poor season.

The story behind the scores is so much more exciting. The 2009 season saw the Under 13's grow into a real squad of players, who enjoyed playing together, supported each other and grew in stature. When our captain and other more experienced players were able to rejoin the team, we were really motoring!! Unfortunately only one league game remained and this was against Maidenhead and Bray. The result was against us but in the words of their Under 13s manager, who kindly took time to come over to congratulate our team, '' We thrashed you in May but today, well it's the first time this season that we really thought that we were going to lose. Congratulations to you all on your improvement!''

Riding high, it was on to the Ray Dene Cup and here the Under 13's did Windsor proud. Winning all five games comprehensively and against foes such as Valley End, who had bowled us out rather too easily in the Surrey League, we made it to the final played last Sunday at Egham against Woking. It was not our finest performance with too many mistakes in the field but all agreed that it was a season well played.

We would like to commend all the players for their performances, their commitment and their behaviour. George Parsons, Captain and Berkshire Under 13s County Player, deserves special mention. He worked tirelessly to place an inexperienced field and keep moral high with his own sense of humorous encouragement and still managed to deliver wickets consistently and attain an almost perfect batting score, retiring on 30 in most of the league and on 50 in the Ray Dene Cup games. Gareth George should be commended for his captaincy in George's absence and also for his constant encouragement to the team. Kevin Dass improved consistently throughout the season and as his confidence grew delivered some notable batting and bowling performances. Hugh Gillen-Toon and Harry Hill both played as Wicket Keeper and put in great performances both in this position and as batsmen. James Sandom, as the youngest player at only 11 was a regular the wicket taker - his bowl and catch in the Ray Dene final was a fitting high point to his season.

Advice to next years under 13's would be to spread matches out at the start of the season to enable some necessary training and team building. For the Under 13 squad of 2009, hopefully we will all get together to reminisce in October and start planning our 2010 campaign.

While I was only able to field 7 Windsor players with the help of VE supplying 3 we played a 25 over 10 a side game. We managed to keep VE down to only 106 runs which included a 33 not out by their opener Harry Q, with some good bowling from Callum, Devansh, Arjun, Sam, and especially Cameron and VE supplied Ollie and two run outs and despite some sloppy fielding and 5 dropped catches, (I think I know what I will be coaching this week!).

On the batting side we were very impressive and I am pleased to say we did not have to rely on our VE imports, as it was a friendly we batted the whole 25 overs having reached the required 107 in 17 overs. While everyone had a bat and all got onto the score-card particular mentions for Arjun's second successive 32 retired NO, Jamie's 29 before being bowled by a non bouncing fast one, Ed for his first knock in the U13's and getting off the mark with a fearless boundary and Cameron who with the cry, heard from the boundary, of "let's get stuck in" promptly hit an unbeaten 30 off 12 balls including four 4's and two successive 6's.

This is the webpage of Windsor CC U13s. News and Match Reports will appear here shortly.