ely County Ground in Derby. There were 16 regional champions from all parts of England and Wales. We were in a group of 4 teams with 
South West Champions from Wimbourne (Dorset), North from Barrow (Cumbria) and 
Yorkshire Champions from Leeds. It was great to meet and play against children from other areas but rather nerve racking.Two days of camping and outdoor activities plus a 3 and a half hour journey (getting up at 5.30am) was hardly good preparation and our boys were quite sluggish in the first match v Wimbourne. We played probably our worst game of the season losing to the Dorset boys who were very talented - particularly at bowling. Our second match v Barrow was close. We played better but lost narrowly. Wimbourne beat all of the teams in our group convincingly and Leeds had beaten Barrow. We went into our 3rd match really wanting to put in a good performance and still finish as runners up in the group.
We batted first against the boys from Yorkshire (there are 1000 Primary Schools in Yorkshire compared with about 250 in Suffolk) and got a good score on the board. Robert Hitcham's then bowled and fielded to the best of their ability. There were some brilliant catches taken by Josh, Ryan, Charlie and Adam. We took 11 wickets in this match to win by a big enough margin to put us into the last 8.
Unfortunately the weather now turned nasty and only the group winners were to play each other. The final even ended up being played indoors in the superb indoor cricket school at the ground. For SRH Framlingham to finish in the top 8 teams in the country was a thrilling end to what has been a great season of cricket. Over 125,000 children took part in this year's competition so our boys can be really proud of their achievement.
With two of our team in year 5 and with loads of promosing players coming up through the school, hopefully we can look forward to another good summer of cricket next year.
More photos were taken by some of our parents. These will be added to the blog early next week. Thanks to Mr Cantrell for his support throughout the season, to Helen Brook for keeping our scores at the County, Regional & National Finals and to Mr Dyer for videoing at the Nationals.
