As Summer is nearly over we had one last session of Cricket @EFSC

The weather was kind to us again last Saturday allowing a full session outside on the playground at Oak View School. We made the most of it with a session based around Cricket with skills practice on catching and throwing, as well as batting.
The session started, as always, with a warm up led by Ray and Ollie. It was straight in to some throwing and catching practice with the group splitting up in to pairs. Each pair had one tennis ball and a round disk on the ground. The aim was to bounce pass the ball to each other seeing if they could get the ball to bounce on the flat disk in the middle. Ideally it would be throw down on to the disk and the partner would catch the ball before taking their turn. The further the child was from the disk the harder it was to hit the target.
From there Ray led a catching game called Champion. All the kids lined up and when called Ray would throw a tennis ball to you. If you caught it you moved up the line, if you failed to catch it you moved down. At the end of the game the child at the top of the line was the Champion. The game was then spiced up a bit by adding a return throw in to the game. If you threw the ball and it was caught by Cliff ( Charlotte's Dad) in a bucket then you got to move up two spaces instead of one. 

Matthew practices with his Dad at throwing & catching

The kids line up for a game of Champion

Davina's turn to catch

After a quick drinks break it was on to throwing practice. The group split in to four with each group having their own wicket. A coach would roll the ball out to the first child in line and they had to pick the ball up and throw it at the stumps. Each child took it in turn and some progressed from under arm throwing to over arm and there was some very accurate throwing on display!
From there we moved to batting practice, hitting the ball off of plastic tees with the aim of getting it between two markers at the end of the playground. This was to emphasise aim and direction when batting.

After the main break we put everything together in a game of Three Tee Cricket.
The group split in to two teams. Those batting first had to take it in turns to hit three balls off of three tees. When they hit the balls then fielding team are not allowed to touch the balls until the last ball is hit. Once that last ball is hit the fielding team have to get all three balls and tees back to their starting position. In that time the batter has to run between two wickets as many times as possible. 

Liam sends ball and tee flying on his turn

Bubbles at the end of the session with Happy Hammer Hal singing his West Ham song

At the end of the game Coach Alan totted up all the runs on each team and Ollies team won by a couple of runs. It was a great game with lots of running and using all the skills learnt throughout the session.
Before we wrapped up for the day Davina had brought in some bubbles so the kids had five  minutes of fun with those which was a nice change.

It was great to see a few faces back for the first time since the summer break - Matthew, Callum and Lakshman. It was Lakshman that was awarded the Star of the Week by the coaches. Very well done!

Join the team again next Saturday to see what fun Alan, Ray and Ollie have in store.

Our Star performer - Lakshman, pictured with his Mum