Dartford colts form England T20 guard of honour

Dartford juniors line up at Kia Oval for England v New Zealand international.

For those of you who watched the England v New Zealand T20 match at the Oval on Tuesday night, you may have thought you saw a familiar face or two in the Guard of Honour and you would be right!

Dartford Cricket Club's colts were asked by NatWest, in connection with their CricketForce initiative, to provide a children's guard of honour for the England v New Zealand T20 match.

Richard very kindly suggested DCC, so twelve children from DCC (plus Richard's two children) were selected based either on their hard work at this year's CricketForce or for the Club generally, together with the children of others who volunteer their time to the Club.

At the beginning of the match, two groups of six colts were positioned on the pitch holding the two large national flags whilst the remaining two colts were flag bearers and accompanied the umpires leading the teams onto the pitch. After New Zealand's impressive innings of 201, the colts were back on the pitch again, this time each holding individual England flags, forming a guard to welcome the English opening batsmen onto the pitch.

All the colts (and accompanying adults) had a great time (even though New Zealand won!) and behaved in a manner expected by DCC's high standards; they were great ambassadors for the Club.

I believe this is the first time DCC has had this very rare honour, and one that will hopefully stay with and inspire them, for a very long time to come.

Finally, DCC's thanks go to Richard Webb, Private Banking, NatWest and Paula Sharp of NatWest's Product and Retail Dept for offering DCC this amazing opportunity and to Clarkes Coaches for providing us with such a lovely and comfortable coach for our journey!

Michelle Slater - CricketForce Coordinator (07973 787707)