Our Year 5 cricket team won a London-wide cricket tournament!

Our Year 5 cricket team won a London-wide cricket tournament!

The journey to victory began last year, when they were in Year 4. A charity called ‘Platform Cricket’ which teaches cricket in PE lessons in schools across London came in to do that at AJS with Year 4. We then played against 5 other local schools in a mini tournament at Crystal Palace Park. The Chestnut (now Elm) class team won that tournament, and the Cherry (now Beech) team finished second. This earned us a place in the all-London finals.

Due to some organisational difficulty, the all-London finals were put back to the following (i.e. this) summer! But they eventually happened on Tuesday 3rd June 2025. We took the same team that won the preliminary tournament last year, minus a couple of unavailable players who were replaced by a couple of star players from the other class. We went to Blackheath Sports Club for the tournament.

We played 6 games during the day in what was a 16 team tournament, comprised of schools who won their own preliminary tournaments last year. We won all 6 games! Three were a group stage, then a QF, SF and Final. The final was against Park Hill school in Croydon – almost a derby in the context of the whole city. The children performed brilliantly and have excelled themselves in winning a tournament that was originally – according to the Platform Cricket organisation – entered by over 400 schools!

The winning players were Charlie (captain), Eric, Tom, Walter, Arthur, Ruby, Sophie, Leo and Noah.