The DSC Blackcaps contribute to youth cricket not only on a local level here in Düsseldorf, but also on a German national level! To that end two of our members, Dan Kremer and Benjamin Das, currently coach the Under 15 German National Team. Both have put in an outstanding effort to encourage and train these cricketing superstars of the future.

The team recently took part in an international competition in Rome against other budding youth cricket nations. Here is a first hand report of the tournament from Dan, one of our national coaches!

U15 European Championships 8-12 August 2005 Rome

The German team flew out to Rome in a confident mood, the coaching staff of Ben Dass and Dan Kremer both of DSC were also quietly confident. Although we only had 2 opportunities to get the boys together, what we saw inspired confidence. The tournament started with a difficult match against the hosts. Italy were tipped as one of the tournament favorites. Batting first the boys put on 152 all out against a fierce attack, we ended up losing by 6 wickets.

Next we played a very strong Isle of Man team, this time we put them in and did well to restrict them to 230-6. Unfortunately our batting crumbled under good line and length bowling and we were dismissed for 125. Isle of Man were the eventual winners

All chances of winning the tournament had now gone we could however still finish 5th, our last game saw us take on Greece who are renowned for their youth set up. Once again our batting let us down and we were all out for only 126 runs. The boys didn’t give up and fought all the way and unfortunately lost by just 2 wickets.

Although we hadn’t won any of our group matches we still had the opportunity to finish 5th, the next game saw us paired with France. We lost this by 35 runs but to be fair we should really have won this match, you could see for the first time that the boys were playing as a unit and it was just inexperience which let us down.

So onto the final game, a playoff for 7th place. Time to face Greece again and see if we could inflict some revenge. Greece batted first and scored 184 but they had a last wicket partnership of over 100 runs, this gave Greece hope as they should have been all out for less than 100. The boys didn’t let their heads go down and a great batting performance enabled us to win by 8 wickets.

So a lot of lessons learnt by both the coaches and the players, most importantly that playing regularly is the key to confidence, practice makes perfect.

A big well don to DSC player Liam Williams who played in all but one of the games a good team allrounder who will certaintly be in with a shout for next years U17s.

Dan Kremer

National Coach U15 2005