The cricket tour to South Africa has been a great success with Colfeians gaining invaluable experience of life in another country.  Max Dunmore, Year 13, was there:

Match 1 

Our first match gave us an early wakeup call to the other side of South Africa. After spending the first day on a beach and visiting the affluent waterfront, the coach journey showed us vast stretches of shanty towns. Located in the middle of the poverty stricken area, we found a pleasant couple of cricket pitches and I tossed up with their very jolly captain - we won the toss and batted first. Acclimatising to the heat took us time which was reflected by our below par score of 140. We bowled them out with relative ease with James Winnard bowling well. Unfortunately this was to be his only major input on the tour as he got injured in his next appearance.







Match 2







Each school was a privilege to play at; their fields, the views and the weather were all superior to the surroundings in England. Rondebosch High school was the venue and was the best of the grounds for me. Their cricket matched their school as they beat us by 80 runs and bowled us out. Alex Graham was the stand out performer in the field, while Frankie Fraser played responsibly and scored 60.  







Match 3







Next up was Bishops where we performed perhaps at our best. We restricted them to 150 of 35 overs with William Smith bowling excellently. After a slow start, Euan Johnson hit a match winning half century to allow us to win the game with a few balls to spare.







Match 4                    







Wynberg is a school of 850 boys and presented us with our biggest challenge of the tour. We fielded badly and let them set an unreachable target. Despite Frankie again scoring runs and Alex Graham’s promising but brief cameo, we were never in a position to win and we didn’t help ourselves with two run outs in 4 balls.





Match 5             





This match against Somerset College reunited Colfe’s with old boy James Carmichael who we felt had greatly matured. We set a reasonable target on another beautiful pitch where Stiddard and Alex scored attractive fifties. We did ok in the field and we won the match after an excellent spell by Max Collet who bowled economically and took 5 wickets. With the sun setting and the team winning, this was perhaps the most enjoyable half hour of cricket of the tour.