On January 7th, myself and Aaron McGuire (Rush CC) departed from Dublin and set out on our travels to South Africa where we will be spending nine weeks at Muir College in South Africa’s Eastern Cape.
For the first two days of our stay here, former Muir College coach, Mr Runeshan Moodley looked after us. On arrival, Mr Moodley brought us to St George's Park to watch Eastern Province play Border and we went to the indoor nets there to have a quick training session.
As our stay ended in Port Elizabeth, we travelled to Grahamstown as part of the Muir College 1st XI squad to play in a 3-day, pre-season festival at the very impressive St. Andrews College. These three days benefitted Aaron and myself greatly as we got to know all of our fellow Muir players and got to create a good bond.
In our first game at St Andrew’s College, we played against Trinity House from Johannesburg. We unfortunately lost this very competitive game but myself and Aaron did well in our first outing. I batted for three hours (time match) and got 54 and Aaron picked up a few runs and took a great catch early on.
After travelling back from Grahamstown we finally arrived at Muir College and Mr Gouws and Mr Du Plooy who both stay at the boarding establishment at the school greeted us. They showed us to our rooms and around the school and made us feel very welcome at our new base in Uitenhage.
On February 4th, we travelled into Port Elizabeth to play a 50 over game against Westering 1st XI. We lost the toss and bowled first. We got off to a great start taking a couple of early wickets for little runs. It was a solid bowling performance from our side, bowling Westering out for 125 with Aaron taking the final wicket. We went out to bat for a few overs before lunch and did not lose any wickets. Shortly after going back out to bat, we lost a wicket and I was in to bat. I scored 53 not out and we won the game by four wickets.
The following day Aaron and I, Mr Du Plooy and his girlfriend Claire set off to Kragga Kamma Game Park to see some wildlife. It was a nice sunny day and it was quite an enjoyable experience.
At this stage, we are now into the semi-finals of a T20 competition where we will play local Uitenhage rivals, Daniel Pienaar High school. We lost the toss and we were put into bat making a defendable 125 off our allocated 20 overs. We then bowled them out for 58, which was a great win to put us into the final the following day against Woodridge. The final did not go our way however as we lost but was a great experience to do so well in this competition.
As is now the norm for visiting Leinster players, Aaron and myself are coaching every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at a nearby preparatory school named College Hill. College Hill is Muir College’s feeder school. I hope that some of the children we are coaching will be playing with Muir’s many junior cricket teams in the coming years.
Saturday just gone, we travelled to Graff Reinet to play against Union High School the former school of our new coach Mr Pohlongo's. To win this game would mean a lot to our coach so we knew we had to play to the best of our ability. We batted first and made a defendable 162 against a decent bowling attack. We then bowled our opposition out for 160. It was a great win after Union got off to such a good start and as a team, we showed great character to knuckle down and win the game.
We would both like to thank Cricket Leinster and the staff at Muir College for this great opportunity to spend time here playing some good quality cricket and meeting such great people in the Eastern Cape.
Harry Archer – The Hills CC & Skerries Community College
Aaron McGuire – Rush CC & St Joseph’s