Kelvedon and Feering Women's team are Beaumont Seymour Overall League Champions 2009.
On Saturday 1st August KFCC women's team went to the County Ground, Chelmsford to contest the finals day of the Beaumont Seymour League. KFCC had already won the South League title by remaining undefeated, after being runners up last year.
KFCC played Colchester, Northern league runners up, in the first semi final. The teams from the North League had always won the league title so this would be a stiff challenge for our young side. Colchester batted first and with some excellent bowling from Bryony Butcher (0-15) and Hannah Courtnell (1-15), who took an early wicket, it was difficult for the Colchester batters. However, after 11 overs Colchester were on 66, but had lost 5 of their frontline batters. Kelvedon then put the brakes on their scoring through some excellent bowling from Tia Moore (3-17), Captain Beth Wild (1-13) and Kate Felsted (1-16). The bowling was superbly supported by some sharp fielding which included a run out and 3 great catches from Charlie Clark-Parkinson and Kate Felsted and a brilliant take behind the stumps by 13 year old Natasha Wilson. At the end of their 20 overs Colchester only had 81 runs on the board. Beth Wild(17) and Victoria Yates (23no) opened the batting and carefully accumulated runs against the best Colchester could throw at them. At 42 there was a glimmer of hope for Colchester when Wild was out, but Butcher (23no) and Yates saw KFCC home with 4 overs to spare.
KFCC then met Abberton (the undefeated North Champions) in the final. Although the KFCC team have all played at representative level (for Essex or higher) the large crowd expected the young KFCC side (except for Beth the rest were U17 or younger) to succumb to Abberton's vastly more experienced side. Abberton batted first but outstanding bowling from Courtnell (0-6), Butcher (0-14) and Tia Moore (2-14) stopped Abberton's usually aggressive start. This put more pressure on Abberton who had to start taking risks and this resulted in them being 37 for 3 at 10 overs. Hannah Jeffery then set about the KFCC bowling and quickly reached 25; she was ably supported by Barnes. After Jeffery retired it looked like Abberton would amass a large score in their allotted 15 overs, but, KFCC stuck to their task and a brilliant piece of work by Heather Holmes ended Barnes' resistance. Abberton ended on a respectable but not necessarily match winning 83 with the weather closing in.
KFCC's run chase started badly with the reliable Yates being run out for only 1. But Wild (20) and Butcher (26ret) put on 30 in 5 overs. Abberton then took the valuable wicket of Wild and although Hannah Courtnell regained some impetus with a quick-fire 11 the loss of the big hitting Felsted (4) gave Abberton a huge lift, especially as Abberton's senior Essex player Jeffery still had to bowl (she had taken 4 for 7 in the other semi final). However, Abberton didn't reckon on the depth of KFCC's batting. Jenny Lees(14no) went in and was soon joined by Moore (2no) who guided KFCC home with 2 overs remaining. The gods were obviously on KFCC's side, because as soon as Jenny Lees' had hit a cover drive for 4 to win off Jeffery, the heavens opening.
Team: -
1. Beth Wild,
2. Victoria Yates,
3. Bryony Butcher,
4. Hannah Courtnell,
5. Kate Felsted,
6. Jenny Lees,
7. Tia Moore,
8. Charlie Clark-Parkinson,
9. Louise Johnson,
10. Natasha Wilson
11. Heather Holmes.
8 other players also played in the league winning side in 2009: Lindsey Cowell, Zoe Wager, Vicky Tunn, Haley Ramsey, Rhiannon Griffiths, Verity Minchi, Lucy West and Women's captain Ruth West who missed all but 1 ball of the season through injury.
Paul Lees
