On a blustery morning at Lindal Moor’s Pennington Lane ground last Sunday, 40 eager young cricketers came together to try to emulate the Ashes heroics of Cumbria’s Ben Stokes.

Lindal organised the under-10 softball tournament which was attended by some of the area’s leading junior teams. Millom, Vickerstown, South Lakes Maidens and Lindal took part in a round robin contest that gave novice cricketers and players graduating from the All Stars programme a chance to compete against other clubs.

Lindal Moor junior co-ordinator Dave Brown said: “This has been an encouraging morning for youth cricket in the South Lakes and Furness area. Due to a lack of games, we decided to be pro-active and organise our own tournament so we are really pleased with the attendance.

“These kids clearly love playing cricket. Millom and Lindal are as strong as ever and the skill and hard hitting of the Maidens caught a few spectators by surprise. A real positive for the day was the emergence of Vickerstown.

“They brought 12 very enthusiastic and highly-skilled cricketers. It was great to see them make the effort and they’ll reap the rewards in the future”

Lindal Moor chairman Paul Clarke said: “I’m really pleased for Dave. He puts a lot of time and effort in to the juniors and he has been rewarded with a good turnout this morning.

“We have a highly regarded All Stars programme and a strong junior set-up, but we always need competition so we are very grateful to Millom and Vickerstown for coming through to play our boys and girls. Hopefully, we can all build on this and grow our juniors even more next year.”

With each team winning at least one game and a heavy shower bringing proceedings to a halt just as the final game was coming to a conclusion, the tournament was declared a draw but the day’s real winner was junior cricket.