James Maginnis reports from South Africa

After a long tough weekend of cricket, we hit the beach with the two exchange coaches, Will from Dundee, Scotland and Gustav from Limpopo. The waves were strong but nothing to stop the lads from having a nice swim in the warm Indian Ocean.

We have been training non-stop from 7:00 am till 4:00 pm every day. We are loving the weather although some of the boys are going red in the sun (Cillian and Daniel). We are destroying every last meal as we are so hungry from our long training.

It was a Thursday morning and we were all buzzing to go watch a thrilling ODI in Kingsmead stadium. We arrived with our two friends/coaches Will and Gustav. We went to the commentary box with them, which was a great experience to see what really goes on behind the scenes. We all saw Du Plessis and Kohli hit two amazing hundreds it was magnificent to see two world-class cricketers buildings their innings and leading from the front when their countries needed it the most.

We were shown around the scoring system box that is one of only four fully automated scoring systems in the world based in Durban. The crowd in Kingsmead was very diverse with the support for South Africa and India spread out evenly even though it was a work day the stadium was still sold out which added a great atmosphere and a buzz that we didn’t experience at the Dolphins game.

On Friday, our two 2XI players had a T20 game at Glenwood against a strong Clifton side. Louis scored a solid 23*. He looked very comfortable at the crease against the Clifton bowlers. Cillian our left arm spinner got a wicket on his very first ball of his spell that really put Glenwood back in the game after Clifton had a strong partnership, Cillian bowled very economically only going for eight runs off two overs. Unfortunately, for the 2XI they had a tight loss only losing on the very last ball, with Clifton needing one of the last ball.

This weekend we had Hilton away which was a long 1hr 30 min drive. Cillian, Daniel and Louis games were all cancelled due to bad weather, only the 16a, 15a and 14a were playing this weekend. We won the toss and batted. We finished up on 98 all out after 37 overs, which was a poor performance from us. But we still reckoned we could win this game. This game went to the last wicket as we had them 84 for 9 wickets which meant they needed 14 runs off their last wicket. Unfortunately, we lost the game along with all the other Glenwood teams.

So far all the lads are enjoying the trip. Training every day and loving the sun.

We would like to thank Glenwood High school for hosting us and Mr Munro for making this happen. We would also like to thank Cricket Leinster for organizing everything for us and arranging such a memorable trip for us.

James Maginnis

Phoenix CC & The King’s Hospital school